


aint nothin but a groundhog

by neotericbitch



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Alternate Timelines, F/M, Gen, Human Experimentation, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Mentions of Elvis Presley Songs, Original Character(s), Other, Squirrels, Time Loop, but i tell you what i have plenty of, post-SOW, tanith and militsa are barely even cameos sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:14:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24751456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neotericbitch/pseuds/neotericbitch
Summary: Working a missing persons case that has turned to murder, Valkyrie Cain faces an "alright, but not original" concept.
Relationships: Valkyrie Cain/Militsa Gnosis, Valkyrie Cain/Skulduggery Pleasant
Comments: 10
Kudos: 42





	aint nothin but a groundhog

**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday to ME ONLY

As she does most mornings, Valkyrie wakes in her bed at Grimwood House. She takes Xena out to the yard where she chases a squirrel for a minute, then they both come back inside. Valkyrie showers, dresses, makes a protein shake and brushes her teeth, all the while humming the bars of a favourite song. She checks her text messages, then her emails – a startling new habit – and the two voicemails left for her overnight. One from Tanith, sounding very drunk, with occasional questions and constant assurances that she’s not going to _say anything_ , she just wants to _know_ ; the other from Arabella Wicked, which Valkyrie immediately deletes.

She’s completely taken by surprise when her car stops a third of the way through the journey; tank run dry. While an annoyance, there’s no need for panic in the face of this lapse in car care. She calls Skulduggery.

“Good morning,” he says cheerily.

“I’m outta gas,” Valkyrie tells him.

A thoughtful hum. “How very unfortunate,” she hears the distant crinkling of papers, “that you keep calling it that. Do you have any _good_ news for me?”

She glances about the car, down at herself. “I dunno, I’m devastatingly gorgeous?”

“That’s not news,” says Skulduggery, taking an unnecessary breath equivalent as he prepares to go on right away, but then he falls completely silent, just for a moment. Valkyrie grins into her phone, feeling chuffed as he gathers himself before continuing all business-like, clearing a non-existent throat. “You’ll be pleased to hear that missing person number three turned up in the early hours of the morning. Dead–”

She mutters along, “Just like the others.”

“–like the others, using the identical method of blunt force to the back of the head. From photographs and my brief peek at the corpse, our culprit clearly took less swings than they did for our first body, but still more than our second. Keep in mind, that second body was fairly fresh upon discovery. This one, not so much.”

“So we found two and three out of order.”

“And our killer is growing more efficient.”

She pauses for a second. “Does this guy have the same vampire bites?”

“Valkyrie,” says Skulduggery exasperatedly, and her smile grows wide. “These are pinpricks, one to each side of the neck. You know very well that vampires aren’t capable of neatness, and even if they were, none possess a tooth gap so large.”

“I also know it annoys you when I call them vampire bites despite that, so,” says Valkyrie, shrugging, “I’m gonna keep doing it. Unless you come pick me up?”

His voice is flat. “I’m already in Roarhaven.”

“Great.” Valkyrie puts her feet up on the dashboard. “Come get me, I’m an hour away. Right off that pissy little creek.”

“I appreciate that you’ve turned to me for assistance, and I’ve already come up with some solutions for you,” says Skulduggery, and she can picture him raising a finger for each one. “The first is to take this opportunity to continue practising your flying.”

“Where mortals can see me? Totally.” She rolls her shoulders. “And I can fly just fine nowadays, thanks. I sure as hell look cooler than you.”

“Oh, I disagree. There’s no grace to how you operate. You bounce around like a little pinball; fitting for someone so pin _headed_ , but it still shocks me how little poise you’ve absorbed from all the time you spend with me.”

“I can’t do anything right.”

“Not a one. The second solution I can think of is to prevent these circumstances from happening in the first place. Perhaps by way of sending some sort of telepathic message to your past self, or even inventing time travel if you’re feeling adventurous, so you know to refuel.” He pauses for her to comment. When she doesn’t, he caps off, “Or you could put your devastating looks to some good use and get a ride.”

“Not an option,” Valkyrie says solemnly. “It’ll work too well, I’ll end up with a different kind.”

Skulduggery hangs up and Valkyrie laughs, and forty-five minutes later, the Bentley appears up the road.

* * *

The dead sorcerers – two Elementals, one Adept – had frequented the same social circle in life, and it had been a mutual friend of all three to have reported them missing in the first place. Yesterday, that person went missing as well, and as of today, all their friends have been found in varied states of post-death. Valkyrie doesn’t wish to be defeatist about it, but she doesn’t expect her second meeting with the concerned mutual to be any more than seeing their body next in line.

The first victim had been dead even before he was reported missing, his extended absence not regarded as suspicious until two of his acquaintances also dropped off the radar within days of each one a month ago. If the timeline as Skulduggery has envisioned is correct, this third body, the second victim, was only kept around for a few days as opposed to the other two; weeks in the case of the third, maybe even _months_ for the first. The killer evidently performed the same experiment on each one of their victims, but the exact nature of such an experiment remains unknown. All there is to work on are those two strange pinpricks, the leftovers of morphine in each sorcerer’s systems and traces of one last unidentifiable substance.

Skulduggery doesn’t seem at all concerned with the _why_ or the _what_ – the experiment – as long as the _how_ – cause of death – has been solved, and he focuses his attention now to the _who_. Valkyrie sits on the edge of his desk as he again reviews the social connections between victims, the people in their lives being the only thing they really had in common – the second and third had never even met.

“Figured out the password,” says Valkyrie, setting the unlocked phone of the second victim down on the desk. “Guess what it was.”

“If I wanted to guess I wouldn’t have had you do it,” Skulduggery replies, only slightly lifting his head as he picks up the phone and goes to check the call log.

Valkyrie scoffs good-naturedly but saves her barbs for later, switching her crossed legs in a mildly show off-y fashion; Militsa has been scarce with the compliments recently, and one from Skulduggery always goes appreciated, even if it’s accidental and doesn’t really mean anything. He turns the phone screen to her so she can see the contact entry for the last person the dead Elemental spoke to on their phone.

“ _Oh_ ,” she says with false, forced recognition. “Well, that explains it.”

“Does it?” asks Skulduggery, tilting his head, angling the phone back to him alone. “I don’t think there’s a connection, not any that I can see. I should remember this name, shouldn’t I?”

“Shut up.”

He holds his hand aloft for half a second – a mild physical hesitation no one but Valkyrie would notice – then gently pats her outstretched calf. “Do you need a hint?”

“No, bugger off.”

“We spoke to them on Monday.”

“Oh, it’s the,” Valkyrie snaps her fingers, white sparks crackle involuntarily, “the fuckin’, ah. The cousin. Green hair.”

“Martyr Presley, cousin of the first victim,” Skulduggery rattles off. “Volunteer at the third victim’s place of work, and now, it seems,” he sets the phone back on the desk, “acquainted with the second.”

Valkyrie hops down and turns to get a better look at the compiled case files. She rummages. “We namedropped number two when we spoke to them, didn’t we?”

Skulduggery hands her a scrap of paper containing her own handwriting. ”That’s right.”

Consults her notes. “They said they didn’t know them.”

“That they did.”

“So we’ll be seeing Martyr Presley again.”

“Soon, I should hope.”

They spend almost the entire rest of the day trying to track down their quarry, visiting their home, the florists’ they volunteer at, their parents’ house in Kells. Presley’s neighbours have seen them out and about, but as the person in the apartment next door puts it, they could be running off anywhere and no one would know about it. They last appeared in the florists’ on Wednesday and Thursday the week prior. They don’t keep in regular contact with their parents, but they did briefly speak when their cousin was confirmed dead.

Valkyrie asks the parents about Presley’s relationship with Phil Dreary, knowing better than to trust Presley’s own words that they were cool (maybe they didn’t use that exact phrasing, but it’s what’s in her notes). Presley’s mother is sure to bemoan how they always preferred her sister and accompanying side of the family; something about spending more time with them in their childhood. She puts emphasis on it being 1960s America and Valkyrie pretends to value this information. 

Skulduggery gets into a fistfight with Presley’s aunt in a mortal library while Valkyrie pretends to be deaf and blind. She doesn’t enjoy crowd control, nor does Presley’s aunt enjoy the Roarhaven holding cell, screaming the roof down with how her wife will have their heads and being generally unhelpful to the case at hand. But Valkyrie does feel for her when the woman shouts a reminder that justice has yet to be done for her son.

They’re pouring over the first and second drafts of Presley’s amateur time travel novella when Valkyrie’s stomach growls obscenely.

“I haven’t eaten all day,” she realises aloud, and Skulduggery reaches over the arm of the sofa to take the story from her. “Oi!”

“You’re reading it in earnest at this point.”

She laughs and half-heartedly grabs for the self-bound paperback. “It’s compellingly awful.”

“And certainly not worth my partner’s starvation.” Skulduggery clears a space on his desk while Valkyrie pulls out her phone, and he asks with performative gruffness, “Will I organise something, then?”

She waits before answering, watching the ellipsis bubble stop and restart, stop and restart, remain on screen for a long time, then stop again. Her thumbs hover over the keyboard as she barely restrains herself from typing something antagonistic, anything to get _some_ response. In the end, only forty seconds have passed by the time Militsa messages her back.

> I’d love to but this staff meeting is running so much longer than it should !! :( sorry

Valkyrie graciously takes back the dinner invitation; she didn’t really want to go out anyway.

“Yeah, can we uh,” she says, pocketing her phone and sitting up off the office sofa, stretching her arms above her head. “Can we take this home and get something delivered?”

The case and all their Arbiter duties are powerless against her whims, and she watches the sun set out the passenger window of the Bentley while Skulduggery drives them both to his house. He doesn’t clarify that that’s where she means. He doesn’t need to. 

* * *

In the morning, Xena is sleeping at Valkyrie’s feet, and all at once she’s hit with panic and relief, irritated at herself for forgetting her responsibilities and grateful as ever for her best friend. This isn’t the first time she’s stayed at Skulduggery’s and left him to deal with her dog, and it will not be the last. Valkyrie shuffles under the covers, patting around, and Xena rises to greet her. Sitting up on one elbow, Valkyrie scratches behind Xena’s ears, squishing her face affectionately.

“Did Mr Pleasant have to go pick you up?” she asks in that particular tone of voice reserved for babies and beloved pets. “Did he? Did he have to go get my special girl?”

Xena shoves one of her big paws into Valkyrie’s breast.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Valkyrie, throwing off the covers and reaching for her nearest jacket.

Xena chases a squirrel in the yard while Valkyrie observes, finding the repeated occurrence mildly remarkable and thinking she will have to tell Skulduggery. Once the dog has weed and Valkyrie’s legs are starting to get cold, she turns back toward the house and fully remembers that Skulduggery doesn’t have a huge yard like this. Nor does his home doesn’t look like that. She’s at Grimwood, Gordon’s house, _her_ house.

When did she get home? Why would she forget that she had? She must have been too tired to remember the request, or the trip, or anything – it’s been known to happen. All the same, she would have sworn she climbed into her bed on Cemetery Road last night.

Her phone is ringing when she gets back up to her bedroom; she dives for it, expecting Skulduggery, seeing instead that the number is blocked. Screwing up her nose, Valkyrie predicts it’s more from Wicked and plans on hanging up as soon as she has confirmation of that.

“What?” she almost barks into the receiver. 

“Hello! This is Martyr Presley speaking.”

A little, “oh,” escapes her mouth without her input. She takes a second to think about what her real response will be. “Hey.”

“Have I reached you at a bad time?”

“I...” She looks all around the room, waiting for something to jump out at her. “... _guess_ not.”

The voice, which had sounded so confident moments before, hesitates. “You do remember me, don’t you? We met this week. My cousin was found dead–”

“Yeah, I remember,” interrupts Valkyrie, almost assuring them. “And you know what? I am so glad you called. Skulduggery and I were trying to get ahold of you yesterday.”

That practised sort of confidence returns. “Oh, I’m aware. I’m also aware you weren’t very successful.” There’s this giddy undertone to their words, and it’s oddly familiar. Valkyrie tries to place it. “Looks like you’ll have to try harder this time around.”

She squints across at her wardrobe, then looks down at Xena sitting on the floor. “I take that to mean you’re not going to give me a forwarding address.”

“Nope. You’ll have to _work_ to close this case, Valkyrie Cain!” She thinks she’s identified it. “It’ll be so much harder than you think.” It’s kind of like the excitement of a kid – or poor villain-of-the-week – too stoked about their hand to maintain a poker face. “But I’m generous, you know! That’s why I’ve called you.”

Valkyrie puts her free hand on her hip and rolls her eyes. “Generous.”

“I’m going to spell this whole thing out for you.” She can hear their grin. “I hope you’ll be grateful, I’m saving time you’d otherwise spend floundering around.” 

“I already know what the whole thing is, Martyr. I have to find you, because not only are you linked to three dead people, you’ve rung my personal number and outed yourself as a fucking weirdo. Call it a hunch, but I think you’re involved.”

“Everything I do serves an important purpose. You see, I’m hoping to–”

She talks over them. “Do I _need_ to hear the plot summary before I get to work? Could it wait until I’ve put you in handcuffs?”

“I.” They splutter a bit, and it’s a bit more of a guilty pleasure these days but Valkyrie is still so amused by it. “I think you need to hear it.”

She mulls over this, complete with humming. “Okay, but keep in mind I’ve faced a lot in my time. I doubt you’ve got anything original to offer.”

Presley cries, “I’m original!”

“You have yet to prove that. Oh, and make sure your evil plot is good and life-threatening. I’m a seasoned gal. I spent a good portion of last year in an alternate dimension,” she confides. “The stakes have to be _pretty high_ to impress me.”

They don’t say anything to that.

“Not life-threatening, huh?”

“Um. Not really. I mean, there’s a small...” Their voice becomes a little distant, like they’re holding their phone away from their face. There’s an odd clacking sound; the heavy keys of a mechanical keyboard. “Sorry, hold on.” More of this rustling, then Presley returns their phone to their ear. “Um, you know you kind of, you completely railroaded me just now.” The tone they now speak in is the one Valkyrie remembers from Monday. “I get what you’re saying, but... Look, I don’t know, I think you’d be invested in my thing, if you gave it a chance.”

“Ugh.” Valkyrie flops down on her bed. “The amount of people who have said that to me.”

“V– Ms Cain– Ma’am, please, this is spiralling so far away from what I hoped–”

“No kidding.”

“The others were so easily caught up in it, I could just do my thing and they’d let me,” Presley tries to explain. “Please, let me do my thing? I’ll be quick.”

She groans and shakes her head, shutting her eyes. “Proceed.”

They’re silent for a few moments. “This is Martyr Presley speaking.”

Dully, “Hello.”

“It’s my understanding that you’ve been looking for me.”

“Wish I’d bloody succeeded.”

“Oho!” Presley clears their throat and tries to get back into it, despite everything. “In a certain sense you _did_ , Ms Cain. You’ve found me, but more importantly you’ve found _yourself_ – at _my_ mercy! For you see! You are the next test subject in my series of temporal experiments; I have _trapped you_ in a time loop. One day into infinity, with only one hope of escaping! Find me in the loop and earn your freedom!” Presley gives it their best effort to do a villainous laugh, and ends up having a coughing fit. Valkyrie lets this happen. Eventually they settle down and take a deep breath. They wait a couple of seconds, expectant, before blurting out, “Well, what do you think? Do you like the concept?”

“It’s al _right_ ,” Valkyrie answers. “It’s not _original_ , that’s for sure.” 

“I-I know there’s been movies with this sort of premise, that’s on purpose. Time travel type stuff, it – it interests me. I like the idea of repeating a day until you’ve perfected it. In this case, _your_ version of a perfected day, a perfected 20th of February, would be one where you find me instead of failing. Not high stakes, but, impressive, right?”

“Well, hold on, now. I think that’s not the thing to focus on.” She sits up. “I don’t even know where to begin with this. I certainly don’t think it’s possible. How would you even _manage–_ ”

“Aha!” cries Presley, delighted. “You see, I _told_ you you’d get invested! _Ha ha ha!_ ”

They hang up.

Valkyrie holds up her phone and looks into the black screen, at her somewhat distorted reflection in the glass. Her brow is already furrowed, and the more she reflects on the strange and erratic conversation she was just a part of the more her face contorts. She’s totally thrown. That was all a very weird thing to hear first thing in the morning.

And obviously, untrue nonsense; the ramblings of an attention seeker. Valkyrie knows about time travel magic. People can go back, sure, but it’s a waste. The past can’t be changed, can’t be interacted with directly, it’s a walking tour at best, and the future can only be seen by Sensitives. Time can be _frozen_ for individuals, but that’s a different thing. This whole thing is a different thing.

And didn’t Presley identify themselves as a vita rather than _a time traveller_ on Monday?

Leaving her phone on the bed, Valkyrie goes and gets in the shower. Xena is a good girl and great company, but Valkyrie needs these precious minutes all to herself, just to look at the wall and process what has been suggested to her. There’s nothing but the situation of waking at home to lend itself to the possibility – and Valkyrie has awoken in places with no memory of getting there time, time, and time again. As for squirrels, they’ve appeared more than one day in a row before. But at the same time and place?

She posits to herself, if Presley's claims are correct and she’s about to go out and do the day prior all over again...then what? What could she do with that information? Isn’t part of the appeal of a time loop to have the person trapped there realise it? Why spoil that for her? Not to mention how big an “if” this possibility is; she hasn’t even made an effort to check. Stellar detective work.

The date doesn’t mean anything to her because she doesn’t keep track of it, but she does know it shouldn’t be Thursday. Thursday was yesterday. And like yesterday, she has two voicemails waiting.

Frowning, Valkyrie selects the first and tucks her wet hair behind her ear to listen.

“Hey Val, it’s me. Sorry to call so late, I just wanted to talk to you for a minute about Skulduggery, the whole– The thing.” A short pause, background noises indicative of a party. “About _Vile?_ Because I’m still, I'm still working through all that.” Tanith’s voice lowers, “I’m not going to _tell_ anyone, I already told you, I’d never do that. I’d _never_ do that. Skulduggery, you know, he’s just as much my friend as he is yours. Maybe, okay, not _just_ as much. I know that, and I’m cool with it! I am. I love you guys so much and I am so, _so_ happy you have each other.” A deep, shuddering breath followed by the sniffle of a blocked nose. “I just, I could never–”

That’s as much as Valkyrie can bear to hear again. She doesn’t want to touch Wicked’s message, if that’s indeed what this is about to be, but it would make for excellent evidence considering that it isn’t supposed to exist on her phone anymore.

“Still too good to answer, I see.” Delete. Valkyrie _cannot believe_ Militsa could be with someone with a voice like that. She cannot believe someone with a voice like that is a _teacher_. A voice is everything; a voice can make or break one's day. How do the students stand it? Poor Omen. 

And on top of it all, the woman’s message really had returned to Valkyrie’s phone, marked as not yet listened to just like Tanith’s. After a minute of harried contemplation, she straightens up and closes her eyes. Breathes in through her nose, out her mouth. Then she calls Skulduggery.

“Good morning,” he says cheerily.

The words tumble out. “Not coming in today.”

He takes a second. “I see.” That voice of his, it’s everything Wicked’s could never be. Including tinged with some concern. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine, I just...” Valkyrie whirls her wrist. “I need to take a mental health day. I’m really okay, I just know that when I gotta take some time, I gotta take some time. And I do. For self care stuff. Sorry, I know the case is...ongoing.”

“The case doesn’t matter,” Skulduggery asserts. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“I am. For real.”

“If you…” He’s not very good at offering, but he always tries. “I could come down…”

“I promise you, Skulduggery, I am all good. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

Just as abrupt as her opening, she blunders, “Yeah thanks bye,” and hangs up. She puts down her phone and seats herself back on her bed, blinking an inordinate amount of times. She even pinches herself, and Xena gets up from her spot to come lick the mark on her arm.

Valkyrie thinks about it for a minute more, then crawls back under the covers. She is asleep in minutes, doesn’t wake until after midday, and does nothing more than sit around her house for the rest of it.

No better than if she still had the music box.

After sunset and a phone call to confirm, Skulduggery arrives with food for her. It’s not a judgement on his part, she’s pretty sure, but she knows it’s only because _he_ knows she hasn’t eaten at all.

He says very little, just states his reason for being here with citations about how she’s often done no actual self care on alleged mental health days, then sits across from her in the dining room, silent and still, regarding her and her jersey. Valkyrie at first focuses on the task at hand – eating – but after having pushed it away all day, it comes back to her. The strange situation she may be in, and how she can’t simply shut down when she doesn’t know how to deal with something. She has to, for lack of a better word, invest.

So she asks about Skulduggery’s day, and he recounts it to her. The third body, belonging to the second chronological victim, was found in the early morning. Like the others, the body is marked with a pinprick to either side of the neck and a horrible gash to the back of the head. Through some digging, Skulduggery found that the victim had been in recent contact with Martyr Presley, once again a person of interest for their ties to every sorcerer involved in the case. Their whereabouts remain unknown, unlike the whereabouts of their aunt, who temporarily resides in a Roarhaven holding cell for assaulting an Arbiter. All of it just as it was, as she lived it yesterday, minus Valkyrie.

She pulls on a coat and throws herself and her dog into the Bentley, asking very casually to stay at Skulduggery’s tonight. 

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” he correctly observes.

Valkyrie looks him straight in the sockets. “Something weird happened, I don’t fully know what it is yet. It’s sort of, uh. Messed with me.”

He leans in only slightly, ready to listen, and for a moment she feels ready to tell. But she loses her nerve at the last second and shakes her head.

“I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. I promise it’s fine. Just weird.” She says again, “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

He tilts his head, but doesn’t push further. And in the morning, Valkyrie wakes in her own bed at Grimwood House.

* * *

She brings her phone out into the yard with her, keeping a firm hold on it in her pocket as she supervises Xena with the squirrel. She kept it under her pillow in the night, staring at the ceiling and not sleeping, not that that ended up making a difference. Valkyrie hadn’t really expected it to, but it’s one of those things a person in a time loop has to try at least once. Or so she would assume.

At some point it occurred to her that she hadn’t communicated with Militsa all day, not sent anything nor heard anything, and her headspace hadn’t been great to begin with so of course it sent her down a minor spiral. As if there was some sort of significance to it. Eventually she reasoned that everything is fine, it’s only one of those days where she and Militsa are off doing their own thing; there’s plenty of those, there’s nothing wrong with it. Valkyrie just so happened to get stuck on one of those days, that’s all.

Making her protein shake in the kitchen, she considers listening to more of Wicked’s voicemail than the first few words this time around, and just as her hand twitches towards her phone on the counter, it rings.

She snatches it up. “Hello.”

“Hi,” says Presley with what could be interpreted as pleasant surprise. “This is Martyr Presley speaking.”

“I know. I’ve got a couple of questions.”

“ _Yes_ , I hoped so! Go on, then, ask away.”

Valkyrie takes a moment to frown at her blender before starting to walk circles around her kitchen. “Is this… This isn’t about to be the same conversation as before, is it?”

“Oh dear, no,” says Presley, sounding awfully eager. “I know we’ve spoken already, I’m separate from the experiment. I just think it’s good to call at the same time for every loop. Unless it’s not?”

“I don’t care, it literally doesn’t matter. Just tell me.” Valkyrie roughly combs her free hand through her hair. “What is _actually_ happening to me right now – where _am_ I?” In addition, “What do you mean when you say you’re _separate?_ ”

“Those are all good questions! Hold on.” Presley hums to themselves as they loudly shuffle things about on their end, wherever that may be. “Um, okay so, right now you’re experiencing the effects of my induced time loop, so you’re in two places at once. Your physical form is right here with me, but your conscious mind is elsewhere while you do the loops. By my markers, I’ve reached you at the beginning of your second. And actually – sorry, this is only sort of related – I hope you’re going to _do something_ this time because it looks like you kind of...didn’t, for that first runthrough.”

Clearly this is a very involved operation to which she has little frame of reference. But Valkyrie thinks she can parse the most important thing. “This is all in my head.”

“I don’t like that expression,” they say snippily. “It implies none of it is real. It’s _real_ , you are _really_ reliving your day.”

Valkyrie makes a face. “Not physically, though, is that right?” They say nothing to the contrary, so she goes on, “I’m not in the real Thursday, it’s already happened. Thursday’s gone.”

“No, because you’re there!”

“Yeah, _I’m_ here,” says Valkyrie, stalking to a window in the dining room. She opens it, sticks her head out. “But you’re not.”

Presley hesitates before admitting, “No.”

“So the real Thursday has passed, and everything that happened then is what happened, and that’s that.”

“Yes, but it’s more than–”

“There’s no legitimate time travel going on, reality’s not gonna shape itself around what I get up to here.”

“Well, no, of course not.”

“So it’s like a dream.”

“It’s _not!_ ” they cry. “This is so much more sophisticated than a dream!”

Head back inside, Valkyrie knocks her knuckles against the wall. “A simulation, then. Can you see me in here?”

“This is magic science like no one has ever attempted before,” Presley insists. “It might not be time travel, but it _is_ timeline manipulation, and that’s just as extraordinary! The experience may not be physically real, but it’s _real!_ I’m telling you!”

“It sounds like a lot of trouble for nothing.”

They slam their fist against a hard surface, and she can’t help but jump a bit. “This is not _nothing_ , Valkyrie Cain,” Presley snarls. “This is your _life_ for the foreseeable future. As long as I have you strapped down on my bench, your entire existence relies on me. Your only chance of _ever_ seeing a new day again is if you complete my challenge.”

Her heart beats a little faster, but it’s not hard to keep calm, keep rational. For anyone else in the world, this would be something to worry about. Valkyrie Cain never has to worry.

“Actually,” she says, “all I have to do is wait. You’re operating entirely on borrowed time; keeping me in captivity for more than a day is pure dumb luck on your part. Skulduggery Pleasant is going to show up any minute now and kick your ass.”

Presley doesn’t say anything for a moment, and she self-indulgently imagines them nervously glancing over their shoulder. Then they give a low chuckle, nothing too showy, but it has a quality to it they didn’t have yesterday. Actual confidence. “I wonder what’s holding him up?”

A chill skitters down her back; she tells herself it’s only because of her bare feet on the cold floor. “You’re a third-rate villain, Martyr. You couldn’t stop him if you had a bloody army, and I know you don’t. You’ve got nothing. Everyone you’ve killed had to be faced away first.”

They say, “You're faced away, too,” and end the call.

* * *

Her voicemails. A deep, shuddering breath followed by the sniffle of a blocked nose. “I just, I could never talk to him about this sort of stuff. I know I couldn’t. No one could, except you. You guys have your thing,” it sounds like a bubble bursts in Tanith’s throat, “so I know why you didn’t tell me about Vile, or even Darquesse. I swear I get it, honestly, I do. Everyone wants to know everything, and people come to me to ask about you all the time. Even when I was gone – I can’t remember but I fucking _know_ people asked even then. I _never_ told them anything, and I never will. And...you don’t have to tell me anything, either. But I wish you would. Sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying, this drink is fucking me up. I’m gonna go pee.”

Valkyrie doesn’t listen to Wicked’s message, nor does she doesn’t delete it.

* * *

Stopping for fuel, Valkyrie thinks to herself about how she’s going to play this one. Obviously she’s going to tell Skulduggery what’s going on, there’s no doubt about that – she said she would, and she’s finished with going it alone on alienating adventures like this. Even if nothing can be done from within this trap and the only Skulduggery who can help her is the one on the outside, there’s no reason at all not to make use of the opportunity that’s been provided to her. No reason not to rise to Presley’s challenge. Provided, of course, that a suspicion of hers is correct. 

She strides into the little Arbiter headquarters she and Skulduggery have set up in the bowels of the High Sanctuary; a small series of rooms in some dark corner where no one can bother them. She finds Skulduggery in his office, going over photographs of the latest body; she called him from the car and they discussed the details, she made her same vampire bite joke, but she’s yet to drop her bombshell. That sort of thing has to be done face to face. Face to skull. 

Fantastically dressed as ever, he’s in sharp black with a deep, dark purple shirt for flair. It works nicely with his aura, as does just about everything he wears. Valkyrie has this ongoing theory that he went back to the homewares store where she pointed out the paint swatch that was his aura’s colour and picked it up for reference. She really wouldn’t put it past him.

“There you are,” he says without lifting his head. He picks up the second victim’s phone off the desk and tosses it; she catches it one-handed. “See if you can decipher it.”

“No problem.” Admittedly the password has slipped her mind, but the lock screen serves as an excellent hint and she shortly gets it on the third variation. “Here.”

“Here what?”

“Here’s the phone back.”

This motivates him to look up. Skulduggery takes it from her outstretched hand and swipes a gloved thumb across the screen. There’s a small note of surprise to his voice as he tells her, “Well done,” but evidently her sudden genius isn’t enough to warrant any further comment. He looks for the call log.

“They last spoke to Martyr Presley,” says Valkyrie. “Which is funny, considering Martyr said they didn’t know Cue when we saw them.”

Skulduggery is silent as the name and contact information appears on screen, his skull angled and shoulders perfectly still in a way that states the obvious. Valkyrie’s got his little moves down to a science. What he’ll actually say, however, that’s a tough one.

Skulduggery puts down the phone and the photographs, straightens up from his casual lean against his desk to make good use of the bit of height he has left on her. “My, my,” he says, stepping forward to begin to circle her. “It seems your Sensitive abilities have come quite far.”

Valkyrie can’t contain the grin that wants to burst onto her mouth. She even laughs a bit, turning her head to follow him as he leaves her line of sight, then turning all the way around as he appears on her other side. “Cut that out, you drama king.”

“I think my partner being one step ahead of me is cause for _some_ drama.”

She smacks him on the arm at the end of the circuit and he stops. “Maybe I was just thinking _really hard_ about the case on the way over,” she says teasingly. “Maybe it _is_ my Sensitive abilities.”

“Alright, Valkyrie,” he concedes with an odd tone, and her grin wavers. She couldn’t possibly say why. “Tell me all about your newfound clairvoyance.”

The way she shoves past him is a bit less playful. Valkyrie sits on the edge of his desk with folded arms and crossed legs, trying to keep a serious look on her face.

“You and I; we’ve been through a lot.”

“More than most,” Skulduggery agrees.

“Enough to the point that, if you came to me or I came to you with something completely new and crazy, we’d believe each other right?”

“I imagine so.”

The example isn’t necessary, but it’s finding its way out of her mouth before she can stop it. “Like you having an evil ex-girlfriend. That’s– you know, that was a really crazy thing for me to hear. But I didn’t have a problem believing it.”

He tilts his head. “You had questions.”

“Well yeah, but that wasn’t disbelief, it was– Okay. _Yes,_ I had questions, just like _you’re_ going to when I tell you _my_ crazy thing.”

“I can think of a few already.”

“No, shut up. Listen. Then talk.” Valkyrie uncrosses her legs and puts her hands on her knees, closes her eyes and inhales. Takes a second. Opens her eyes and looks at him. “I’ve lived this day before.”

Skulduggery doesn’t say anything.

She turns her wrist at him. “Talk now.”

There’s a significant change in his tone of voice. “How many times?”

“Just the one.”

“Do you know why?”

“It’s part of the case. Oh, right – Martyr Presley’s the killer. They’ve put me in a...a _Groundhog Day_ -like simulation. I don’t know how or when. It doesn't happen today, not as far as I’m aware.”

“That’s alright,” Skulduggery says, apparently unbothered by the revelation that he’s not strictly real. “What _does_ happen today?”

Valkyrie needlessly fusses with her hair. “We see them in the phone, we look for them all day, we don’t find them. That’s really kind of it, it’s not that remarkable.”

He thinks on this. “Would you be willing to go through it again?”

She frowns and gets to her feet, he takes a step back. “What’s the point in that? I already know what won’t get us anything, so shouldn’t we do _different_ things?”

“That can come later.” Skulduggery offers a hand in a conceding fashion. “Returning to what you’ve already seen may be helpful for moving into the future.”

Valkyrie balks. “The _future?_ ”

“Yes, future repeats of the day.”

“I’m not doing it _again!_ ”

“No one ever solved a time loop on their second lap,” says Skulduggery.

“Goddamn!” exclaims Valkyrie, putting her face in her hands. She shakes her head and as she does so, some sense gets knocked loose and she is reminded of the most important thing. She pinches the bridge of her nose, then raises her head. “It’ll kill time, at least.”

“Until?”

“Until you come get me.”

He looks at her. Valkyrie suddenly feels very stupid.

“You do believe me, don’t you? That this is happening?”

Skulduggery is to the point. “I do. And I want to help you out of it.”

She breathes a sigh of relief, closing the gap between them and pressing her forehead into his shoulder. “Thanks.”

He puts one arm around her, gives the back of her head a pat. “But it _is_ crazy.”

“Yeah.”

“Utterly insane.”

“I know.”

“In fact, I might not believe a word of it,” he says lightheartedly, and she laughs.

It annoys her at first, but Valkyrie goes through the day as identically as she can, getting more into it as she goes. It helps to have Skulduggery in the know, to have him in general. She remembers where they went and who they saw, and he’s on track with her all the way through, interested in everything she can tell him about what they’ve already learned.

They walk down one of the hallways of Presley’s apartment building, Valkyrie referring to relevant doors.

“Neighbours don’t have anything of value to add,” she says. “No one really knows Martyr, they’re just...around sometimes. Next door said something about sneaking off.”

He still wants to talk to the neighbours; Valkyrie doesn’t think of it until later but on the original Thursday the 20th she and Skulduggery spoke to them _after_ investigating the apartment. In the moment, she points out some of Presley’s items and it amuses Skulduggery to no end.

“You took their calendar back to the office but I didn’t see where you got it, but if you found it before you should be able to–”

“It’s here.” His arm appears around the corner, brandishing the folded pages. “Did we open their mail?”

“You suggested it first time round and I said don’t.”

She hears the ripping of an envelope. “I don’t understand you sometimes.”

“Fuckin’– Skulduggery!” Valkyrie ducks back into the kitchen, and he tilts his head in an apologetically unapologetic manner. “I mean, I’m fine with it _now_ , but _still_.”

“It’ll be back to being unopened by the reset,” he reasons, “and _you’ll_ have the benefit of knowing what’s inside. Besides.” Skulduggery pushes his hat back a little. “I highly doubt this is the worst thing I can do to them.”

It’s their credit card statement for January. Evidently Presley joined up with the Bank of Roarhaven, still in its early days but certainly not wanting for customers with its whole _utmost privacy_ policy. The statement doesn’t list any transactions, not a one, instead providing a little code for Presley to use on the Whispering if they wish to review them. The rest of the mail is junk, advertisements, the Church of the Faceless asking for donations. On the way out, Valkyrie relays what she can of Presley’s parents.

“The husband is magic-abstinent,” she says. “So he looks older than he would, I guess. The wife hates her sister.” Thinking of her makes the corners of Valkyrie’s mouth twitch. “You’ll really love the sister’s wife, though.”

“That does not bode well.”

“Ah, come on, your taste isn’t that bad.”

Skulduggery turns his head fractionally in her direction. Her heart thuds once against her ribcage and she stops smiling, goes back to looking out the window. When Presley’s aunt attacks Skulduggery in the library, Valkyrie helps out this time and gets a black eye for her trouble. From her cell, the woman bellows some about how it’s the least she could do to the former Darquesse, and it stings.

In their office, she finishes both drafts of Presley’s novella. It had become important to her to do so since it occurred to her that it could contain clues. If she were really lucky, the idiot would have written about what they were doing right now, but no, she already knows it’s a more traditional venture with a machine and everything. A mortal scientist jumping between the construction of a great monument to its present form. The first draft is just that, the scientist going back and forth, meddling with things, searching for an arbitrary treasure. The second goes a bit more into the consequences of their meddling – a great tumour starting to grow beneath the monument – which Valkyrie reminds herself isn’t relevant.

A shame about that, too. If she were doing the real day over, then sure, maybe she would be inspired to ‘perfect’ it. Ah well. The concept is out there, she supposes. One day some other psycho will pick up where Martyr leaves off – as soon as they’re stopped.

Which they still haven’t been.

Valkyrie rolls onto her stomach, lying lengthways over the office sofa, folding her arms on the end and resting her chin there. “Skulduggery,” she says, more hollowly than intended, “what now? We haven’t _done_ anything.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” He turns his chair to face her. “You’ve had a refresher on some of the relevant subjects. Now you’re less likely to forget the inevitable useless detail that will turn out to be important later.”

“Ugh.” She groans and buries her face in her folded arms. “I hate that.”

“Yes,” says Skulduggery understandingly. “As for what now, in this exact moment? I plan on making a suggestion for what to do with your next repeat, and you’re going to agree with me.”

She chuffs a little laugh. “Hit me with it.”

“We’re missing one last location. The place from which Presley is operating.” He retrieves Presley’s bank statement from behind him on the desk, holding the folded paper aloft. “Based on what we know of this person, how safe a guess would it be to make that they’re renting?”

“Oh, yeah. _Totally_ renting a shady warehouse.” She says it lightheartedly, but the image triggers further imaginings of herself strapped down, plugged into all sorts of machines by her neck – and look, she knows she’s been through worse but it doesn’t make the idea any less unnerving.

“Excellent. Then tomorrow you’ll have us speak with China,” Skulduggery goes on. “Our next point of action is to investigate the Bank’s records, which we’ll need the Supreme Mage to approve of.”

“She won’t approve.”

“She will not.”

“She’ll definitely say _not_ to do it.”

“And after that comes the fun part,” he says brightly. “Breaking into the records.”

“Awesome.” Valkyrie turns over to lie on her back, clasping her hands over her stomach and remembering adventures passed. “I do love a bit of breaking in.”

Skulduggery nods to himself in a self-satisfied sort of way. “We are very good at it.” Angles his skull down to her, “Though this one might take a few tries.”

Her little smile falls from her face, and she tries to bring it back. “Hah, yeah.” It just doesn’t meet her eyes.

Part of her knows he will and hopes he won’t, the other part isn’t sure he will and wants him to, and then Skulduggery leans over the arm of the sofa to predictably pick at her. “You don’t seem terribly enthused.”

She sighs and admits, “It’s just thinking about doing this over again, you know? It really sucks. I was still hoping I wouldn’t have to, I mean, it’s already been two bloody days!” Valkyrie sinks into the cushions in a sulk. “You should’ve come for me by now.”

He sits and regards her in a momentary contemplative silence. “Two days.” Something in his voice makes Valkyrie feel somewhat vindicated in her anxiety; he knows he shouldn’t be taking this long, either.

She lolls her head back, looking at him from below and upside down. “Yep.”

He levels his skull so there’s no question that he’s returning the look. The positioning reminds her of Spider-Man and it totally shouldn’t. Skulduggery says, “You told me you’d only done it once.”

Panic. Valkyrie takes her instinct to move towards him and channels it into a launch, suddenly sitting upright. She knocks her forehead against his teeth and they both bark in reaction, but she doesn’t stop moving, throwing her legs off the sofa and jumping up. “ _Fuck_ me,” she cries, pulling out her phone. “ _Militsa_. I fucking forgot about Militsa.”

She expects a barb aimed at her back, something about her poor effort at changing the subject or lack of grace, but Skulduggery doesn’t say anything. He just draws back from the sofa and sits properly in his desk chair, facing away from her. It hurts. Valkyrie doesn’t know what to do with herself and before she knows it she’s already holding her phone to her ear, waiting for the teacher to pick up, praying for an out.

It’s about the time Valkyrie texted her on the first run through, if Militsa was available to answer then she should be able to answer now. That is, of course, until Valkyrie remembers aloud, “Fucking staff meeting,” and puts the phone away. No such thing as an easy escape.

She takes a minute to breathe, then turns back to Skulduggery. He’s pouring over his desk, as if he’s looking at something very important rather than a stupid short story.

“Okay, listen,” Valkyrie eventually says. “I might have lied by omission. This is– Yes, this is day two. When Martyr dropped this on me, it messed me up, I couldn’t get into _this_ part right away, I needed to process it all first. I needed time.”

“Of course. Anyone would.”

“In a way,” warbles Valkyrie as if it will help her any, “me saying I’d only done the day once before is still the truth.”

Skulduggery glances back. “In a way,” he says. “But I can think of a few things I’d have done differently if I’d known otherwise.”

Her mouth twists. “Then I’ll be sure to tell you next time, _however_ many times come after this. It might be quite a few, depending on how bothered you can be to get me out of this.”

He gets up and steps toward her, and this is somehow worse. “Valkyrie–”

“I know, I know, _I know_ . You’re not always going to be around, I can’t always rely on you to save me. That same shit.” She throws her arms out toward him, almost imploringly. “But, like! You have to! There’s no way you can’t! I _just_ saw you, it was _today_. You’re in top rescuing form!”

Without confirming or denying that last bit, Skulduggery murmurs, “I wasn’t going to say that.”

“This _isn’t_ a problem of faith, for the record,” Valkyrie babbles. “It’s not that. I know you wouldn’t _not_ come get me. You would, just like I’d come get you, because that’s what we do. My _problem_ is that the longer I have to wait, the more I think something fucking awful’s happened to you!”

Softly, “I’m coming.”

“You don’t know that!” Valkyrie shakes her hands in front of her like she’s going to throttle him. She just might. “You’re not you!”

He looks downward for a moment, then straightens back up. “I may not be the Skulduggery you’re referring to specifically,” he says, “but I am _me_ , and I know me. I _certainly_ know that no vitakinetic florist could ever stand in my way.” He pauses. “For longer than perhaps a week.”

Valkyrie snorts, takes in a fresh breath, relaxing her shoulders as much as her body will allow. Unproductive frustration isn’t worth holding onto, anyway. “Look at us,” she mutters and taps him with a fist. “Drama king and queen over here.”

Skulduggery sweeps his arm out over the office. “Behold our kingdom,” and he lets her hit him again before he tilts his head and gets all sentimental again. “I’ll always help you, Valkyrie, in whatever way I can. No matter how long this goes on.”

She smiles gratefully, then groans. “I’ll have to explain the whole thing every day.”

“I’ll believe you every time.”

They hug and she feels better, tells herself that even if she’s stuck here for ages, she still has him, and Skulduggery will always be Skulduggery. The one out there, probably being really heroic right at this moment as she’s thinking about it, and the one in here for the meantime. He might be prone to a daily mind wipe, yes, but he’s just as hers – or just as himself, maybe that’s a better way to put it. Whatever. He feels real enough, that’s for sure.

In the Bentley, she becomes mildly amused and distressed by a concept. “Oh my god,” Valkyrie says, turning from the window. “But what if, though? What if I fuck up my explanation so bad you just don’t believe me?”

“It would have to be quite the fuck up. That said, maybe leave comparisons to Abyssinia out of your next attempt,” he suggests. “That...muddled my expectations.”

It hits her square in the brain and the laugh comes out as a strangled cough. “Oh _god_ , I wasn’t even thinking when I said that, I can’t imagine what _you_ thought. Jesus, what if I was going to reveal I had some wild affair while I was Darquesse? Had a secret not-kid of my own? What _if?_ ” She’s a mix of entertained and absolutely horrified by the idea, and can’t stop grinning. “No, no, I hate it. No thanks.”

They joke about such a concept all the way to Grimwood House, and in the morning she wakes in the same bed she went to sleep in.

* * *

Valkyrie holds Xena back this morning, hoping not to scare the squirrel so they can get a better look at it. The little thing still doesn’t stick around long. The call comes in while she makes herself a coffee for a change.

“That you, Martyr?” she asks very casually.

Presley is taken aback on their end of the line. “Yes, it is.”

“Hi.”

“Hi,” they say back, then poorly segue into, “I want to apologise for what I said earlier.”

Only halfway listening, she sips from her cartoon bone mug and pats her dog. “What was that?”

“For...for threatening you. It was immature and I’m sorry. I’m not going to kill you.”

”Hey, don’t sweat it,” replies Valkyrie, putting some accommodating pep into her voice. “It’s cool, I know you’re not gonna.”

Presley’s tone jumps up like ten notches. “You don’t _know_ that.”

“I do. I’ll prove it.”

She hangs up, finishes her coffee – a fraction too sweet but still good – then dresses and leaves. She expects Presley to call her back; they don’t sound like the type to take being ignored very well, even if they’re not the most confident person out there. With that in mind she finds it odd that there’s no follow-up, but Valkyrie definitely wouldn’t say she’s disappointed.

Militsa’s voice comes out a little scratchy on speakerphone during the drive to Roarhaven. She’s upbeat and everything, but confused and briefly gets caught up in trying to justify it. “You usually don’t call me early, that’s all. What’s the occasion?”

“There isn’t one,” Valkyrie says, shrugging to herself. “I was just going about my morning when it hit me, hey, I haven’t spoken to a certain bombshell recently – and I’d already been talking to myself, so that’s me ruled out.”

Militsa is good at laughing, but more in an obliging fashion than a genuinely amused one. “We got lunch yesterday,” she reminds her.

Valkyrie barely remembers Wednesday. It was a lifetime ago. “How about again today?”

“Oh...well, okay, but I couldn’t be out long. Classes to teach, homework to mark...”

Smacked across the face by something she can’t identify, Valkyrie snaps her fingers and says chirpily, “You know what, I’m gonna be busy too. Let’s do something this weekend instead.”

“That sounds nice.”

“Yep, sure does.” It hurts badly enough to keep up this forced grin, why would she _do_ this to herself. “Talk to you later, then.”

“Bye, love you! Bye! Bye.”

Valkyrie almost throws her phone out the window. She chucks it into the backseat instead, and is so glad she did when her car stops dead in the road. She spits graphic curses and hits the steering wheel, gets out and paces before – whatever, it won’t be permanent – kicking a dent into the door. She climbs up on the car and sits with her boots on the windshield, scowling at her phone. The screen catches the amulet pinned to her jacket collar, the reflected light glinting in her eye.

China said something to her when she was dating Fletcher – an _age_ ago – and Valkyrie can’t remember what _exactly_ it was, but the general idea did stick in the back of her mind. It’s come to the front, again and again, this month and the last. Since getting back, since noticing...things, in herself as well as others.

In her message, Wicked kindly reminds Valkyrie of her disdain for her, assuring her of her better standing with Militsa, finishing up by alluding to something she’d rather discuss in real time than in a recording. Fairly quick and to the point, she gets in and she gets out, still finding a way to waste time, energy, space – on the phone, that is. Valkyrie’s no better as she dances around engaging with either of the other women in this shoddy triangle, only succeeding in making herself look stupid.

A waste of time, and certainly not challenging. And as for whatever redeeming, puppy-like qualities Militsa has, Valkyrie already owns a dog.

She crosses her legs and stays up on the car for a little while. No other vehicles come by, and during this time she puts herself back in the headspace she needs to be in; badass Arbiter Valkyrie Cain, outsmarting her enemies, figuring out mysteries, getting into trouble, with the only person who _really_ matters at her side.

She calls Skulduggery.

“Good morning,” he says cheerily.

“Hi. My car broke down.”

He tuts. “How unfortunate. Do you have any _good_ news for me?”

A slow smile creeps across her face. “I dunno,” she says. “I’m...devastatingly gorgeous?”

“That’s not news.”

Instead of allowing him his silence, Valkyrie laughs. “You’re a classic. Did you find Cue?”

He makes a sound like a clearing of a throat. “They turned up in the early hours of the morning. Dead like the others–”

“Let me guess; more decomposed than Hamson but killed less efficiently.”

He’s silent for a beat. “That,” Skulduggery says carefully, “is a very good guess. How did you know?”

“I’ll tell you if you come pick me up.”

Flatly, “I’m in Roarhaven already. Let me give you some alternate travel suggestions.”

“How about this instead. You pick me up, I tell you what I have on the case, _and_ I’ll throw in how I know you’re wearing a purple shirt.” She hangs up on him for that same thrill she got from doing it to Presley, but then realises she didn’t tell him where she is. So she sends along a picture of the gross creek, and he’s there in fifty minutes.

The Supreme Mage is as enchanting as always, her short time spent in a coma over and done with, her trauma not showing at all on her face. Some Sanctuary agents on the mid-floors have given her a nickname, and they trade it in hushed tones, not that that ever stopped anything reaching China’s ears. Valkyrie thinks it’s a fine enough thing for people to call her, but she’s long since only seen China with clear eyes, and therefore would not do it herself. Valkyrie can only ever picture a sleeping beauty as a blonde, anyway.

China’s recent troubles have sapped her of most of her patience, maybe even some of her tact, and she endlessly turns a small charm over in her hand as she denies the Arbiters access to the Bank of Roarhaven’s records. Not a surprise, so her guests aren’t really offended; Valkyrie’s gaze keeps getting caught in the motion of her fingers, the turning of the charm. She doesn’t think she’s seen it before, but she doesn’t feel the need to ask Skulduggery about it when they leave. They very rarely discuss China at all.

The Bank’s offices exist outside the Circle, which is baffling but quite helpful. They trade cars for one that every sorcerer on the planet won’t recognise and set themselves up on the opposite street, out of sight of cameras. The tint to the windows is magic, so it doesn’t look like they’re tinted at all – almost everyone in Roarhaven has their vehicles done up like that, but Skulduggery would be ash again before he let anyone at the Bentley with a sigil-carving knife.

They look at each other and nod, giving a tap to their respective tattoos, and get out of the cloudy grey hatchback – the Dentley – as Assegai and Some Random Man, intent on walking around the block and making their return to the inside of the car with the help of a Cloaking Sphere each. Valkyrie enjoys this part more than she knows she probably should. The mini stakeout right before the stakeout, watching the street until there’s no one around, just to be sure, then the mad dash to open the doors and dive in.

“I want a slushie,” says Valkyrie when she sees a young mage carrying one. “And it has to be pink raspberry. They still do that flavour, right?”

“Admittedly, I don’t keep track.”

“Ah, you’re useless.” She starts looking every which way, trying to figure out where the slushie came from. “Come on, let’s both get one.”

Skulduggery always takes the opportunity to raise his eyebrows at her when he has them. “It would be a waste.”

“It wouldn’t even have happened,” Valkyrie points out. “Why’d you think _I’m_ having one?"

It’s eight minutes later and they’re standing outside a Roarhaven servo when Skulduggery gestures to her with his FCB. “I have been thinking about the physicality of this, actually.”

She keeps stirring her straw through the mixture without looking up. “Uh-huh.”

“You said Presley insisted that this is more than a simulation, that it’s timeline manipulation. They might be right. These events might be actually happening.” When she doesn’t offer a response, he presses on as they make their return to the car. “They may have found a way to shunt your consciousness into an alternate timeline, one identical up to today, where the Valkyrie of this reality would have done exactly as you did if you weren’t in her place instead.”

“Pretty out-there theory, Skulduggery. Damn.” She presses her palm to her forehead to alleviate the brain freeze. “And that just raises a whole bunch of questions, like, where do the other mes go while I’m them, will they retain my knowledge, does it make what’s happening here permanent... All sorts of shit I don’t want to think about. And, this is very important – _and_ ,” she raises a finger, “then this would _really_ not be time travel.”

“Very true, but Presley might not think so.” Skulduggery looks at his straw for a second and she hopes and prays he’s considering putting it in his mouth. He doesn’t, and his slushie melts a little more. “They may not even be fully aware that they’re achieving this, if they are, or of the consequences, if there are any.”

Valkyrie shuts her eyes. “Please. Don’t make me sit with an existential crisis over this.”

“Oh.” He sharply turns his head to her, blinking in surprise. “No, of course not, that wasn’t my intention–”

“Too late, I’m already thinking about the alternate timeline Valkyries I’ve wrecked. Oh _god_ . I spent all day in fucking _bed_.”

“It’s only a theory,” he says hurriedly.

She looks at the almost empty pink raspberry slushie. “This me’s diet is ruined.”

“ _Or_ ,” he interjects, “this is only a simulation and you’re not _really_ drinking frozen sugar.”

“You’re a right prick, you are,” grumbles Valkyrie, sipping through her blue straw. “You felt bad because you thought you weren’t real so you went and made me be _extra_ real.”

“I hope I’m not real,” says Skulduggery with mock solemnity and a bow of his head. “I can cease to exist when this repeat ends and won’t have to live with such a horrible mistake.”

She elbows him until he clenches his jaw to stop himself emoting, and she grins. “Yeah, but _I’ll_ remember.”

And just as soon as he’s starting to smile, something occurs to him and he’s frowning, looking off into the middle distance. Almost like a bird flew by. He only replies, “Yes,” in that voice of his where Valkyrie knows he’s latching onto an idea, a concept, usually pretty important and relevant to the situation.

She doesn’t ask, and the next several hours are uneventful. Through some miracle not all the conversations she has with Skulduggery revolve around the present predicament, but most do. She can’t fault him for being curious, however she does think it’s getting ridiculous by the time he’s suggesting arranging for him to speak with Presley on the next loop. They argue about how she would even set it up, having to do that and explain the situation to him at the same time, all on top of managing Presley, and there is no resolution.

The unintentional nap Valkyrie ends up taking only serves to freak her out, waking at night in the car rather than her bed in the morning, it puts a bolt of fear and confusion in her. Skulduggery saves whatever snark he had planned for her when he sees how wide and wild her eyes are; he holds one of her hands and puts his other one on her back.

It helps.

“I’m calling it,” she says into her lap. “Let’s go. I’ll get us back here tomorrow; I dunno, make use of the drought at four.”

Skulduggery nods, quiet for a moment, then mutters, “Ah, damn.” She turns her head to him a little, and he shrugs. “I had the thought that I could continue watching after taking you home, but that would be pointless. There’s no use storing information I won’t remember.”

Shaking her head, Valkyrie sits upright and rolls her shoulders, cracking her neck. “Nice thought, though.” On cue almost to a comic effect, her stomach rumbles and she dutifully translates, “I’m starving.”

He withdraws his hands and she feels cold. “I’ll organise something.”

And without bothering to pretend to return to it, the Dentley takes off. Valkyrie rests her elbow at the window with her cheek leaning into her fist, looking out at the passing darkened scenery, thinking her thoughts, formulating ideas, considering Skulduggery’s theory. It’s pulled entirely out of thin air and much more on the sci-fi side than fantasy; but there’s no escaping that there are already known, tangible alternate realities out there, ones she herself has barged into and affected. An alternate timeline, just like the concept of a time loop, sounds ridiculous at first until one remembers what world they occupy. She starts to get a headache and closes her eyes – opening to the driveway of the house at Cemetery Road.

Valkyrie drapes herself across her favourite sofa and snuggles into a series of blankets while watching _Edge of Tomorrow_. She only half pays attention, but the time loop element is relevant and gives her an idea; and Emily Blunt is gorgeous. As she goes into detail about how attractive she finds her to Skulduggery, he hums along in the affirmative without saying anything specific, and when the movie is over he endures her belting out the chorus of Love Me Again.

Turning the television off and already inspired by the viewing experience, Valkyrie starts running herself back through her morning, her morning _s_. She cranes her neck over to the armchair where Skulduggery is sitting, leafing through the toxicology reports of the victims – he did that yesterday, too, without calling attention to it. If he does it again, she’ll ask what he’s looking for.

“Hey,” says Valkyrie, and he lifts his skull to look at her. She thinks about her wording before proceeding. “You and I; we’ve been through a lot.”

“More than most,” Skulduggery agrees.

A massive grin immediately breaks out on her face, and the reports crinkle slightly. Then he relaxes and tilts his head, which only serves to amuse her even more.

“Oh, I see,” he says, definitely chiding her. “You’re testing to see if I’ll respond the same way to things you’ve said before. What an excellent use of your time.”

“It’s going great so far,” she says truthfully.

He returns his view to the reports, trying to be nonchalant. “I don’t enjoy being predictable.”

Valkyrie worms one of her hands out of the blanket burrito so she can wave dismissively at him. “Time loop or no, I can predict you down to the second.”

“Can you, now?”

“Yeah, watch. You’re going to sit there and think about how clever and amazing I am and–” Right away Skulduggery starts to stand and Valkyrie makes a finger gun, aiming at his head. She zaps his hat off. “Oi, I’m predicting over here!”

The hat floats up into his hand as he passes by the sofa, where he gives her a little flick on the nose. Valkyrie writhes in her burrito, struggling to free herself and seek her revenge.

“I’m only gonna catalogue this whole interaction away, you know!” she laughingly shouts after him as he disappears into the hallway. “Anything you do can and will be used against you in a future loop!”

Skulduggery’s voice drifts back into the room, “That’s what I’m afraid of,” and something about it makes her heart stop.

Preparing for bed half an hour later, she texts Militsa something dumb about having a good day, thinking of her, hope the staff meeting went well. The recipient gets back to Valkyrie just as her eyes are drooping and she feels herself falling asleep.

> I didn’t have a staff meeting today ??

* * *

Sure not to add as much sugar as yesterday’s today, Valkyrie’s finishing preparing her coffee in the morning when her phone rings. She doesn’t say anything when she picks up, expecting Presley to start rattling off right away. They do not. In fact, they meet her silence with more silence, which makes her consider the possibility that this is supposed to be a power play of some kind – which, if it is, then she certainly won’t be the first to speak.

Eventually, they say, “Um...hello?”

“You can just start talking when I pick up, you know,” snaps Valkyrie. “You can’t be _that_ anxious about having called the wrong number. Can’t imagine there being very many direct lines into a person’s brain.”

“Oh, hi, sorry, I know, it’s just you didn’t– I...wasn’t sure you’d answer at all.”

“Well,” she drops her spoon in the sink with a loud _clang_ ; she hasn’t been doing the dishes, not while she doesn’t have to. “I did. Here I am.”

She can hear it in the pattern of their breath, them trying to steel themselves. “I’m...not upset at you for hanging up on me, because I was being awful and deserved it. I understand if you don’t want to talk to me anymore.”

Going over to the breakfast bar, Valkyrie sits, leaning down to scratch Xena behind the ear. Despite herself, she wonders if Presley really just spent the last day or so feeling bad for having threatened her. How pathetic if so. _Third-rate villain_ , she reminds herself. “I _never_ want to talk to you, Martyr,” she says. “But I may as well check in if I have the option. I’ve got something else to ask.”

Alongside the tapping of a keyboard, in that little obliging tone of theirs, “Please.”

She thinks one more time about how to go about the question. “By doing new things in each loop, am I creating corresponding alternate timelines where Thursday _really_ happened as I’ve lived it in here?”

A moment of quiet, then, “Oh!” The harsh click of a switch. “You’re asking about consequences! You want to be sure there aren’t any consequences for your actions in the loops, is that right?”

“ _Yes_ ,” she says with a groan.

Presley sounds awfully proud of themselves as they report, “None whatsoever.”

Valkyrie narrows her eyes at the wall. “You’re _sure_ about that?”

“Very sure! Not having to deal with consequences is a feature of a time loop, after all! Don’t you remember? You already asked me if anything here is changing reality, and I said no.” They laugh at her – actually _laugh_ , the bastard. “Is this why your brain activity has been so flat, Ms Cain? Are you not taking advantage of this gift I’ve given you out of fear of, _psh_ , what – _alternate universes?_ ”

They must really think they’re doing her some sort of favour. She indulges in a scowl, but knows she can’t get too caught up in her own irritation. There’s one last thing she has to clarify. “So that should mean if I want to do a quick restart on the day, I can die and not have to worry about it.”

Since the initial thought, Valkyrie had been expecting Presley to get all excited when she brought this up to them; to go on about how, yes, that’s right, death acts as a reset, it works just like it does in the movies. Maybe they’d even try to explain the specific mechanics, which would suck. Rather than do any of that, however, Presley drops their phone and Valkyrie’s ears ring with the intense clattering of what must be a tile floor. She holds her phone away from her face, drinking her coffee and vindictively hoping their screen gets cracked or something equally petty.

Presley’s voice is distant, but they’re obviously crying out. “ _No!_ ”

Valkyrie clicks her tongue against her teeth and waits for her idiot captor to get their shit together.

“Do _not_ ,” Presley gasps into the receiver once they’ve retrieved their phone, “I repeat, _do not die!_ ”

Kind of disappointing, but much more of a relief. She’s been around the old death block before and can’t say she’s keen on doing any more laps, only considering it here for efficiency’s sake. “Alright, thanks for letting me know,” says Valkyrie.

“There is _no_ way to reset a loop from within,” Presley babbles on, “and even if there _were_ it would _not_ be achieved through _death_ , Valkyrie Cain, don’t you _understand?_ Your physical body may not sustain any damage from what you endure in the loops, but pain is in the mind, and a dead brain is _a dead brain!_ ”

She rolls her eyes; that’s what Skulduggery had suggested last night. And it makes sense, of course, she’d just have been satisfied with a plain _no_ and moving on. “Yeah, I got it.”

“Please, under _no_ circumstances– _Promise me_ you won’t do it! I...I-I understand the impulse, the, no – the _motivation_ you would have for wanting to reset your loops, believe me, I do.” They’re not letting this one go easily. “But you can’t. I’m sorry, you can’t.”

“ _I got it_ ,” Valkyrie tells them. “Death bad, don’t do it. Not that different from how it usually is, Martyr, relax.”

“Be careful,” they plead.

And at that, she can’t help but crack a smile. “Always am.”

* * *

Pain is in the mind, indeed. Bank security breaks both her legs and she swears she can still feel it when they’re back to normal the next day.

* * *

Valkyrie comes to stand in his way with her arms spread. “There’s no scenario where you talk to her and it goes well,” she says. “You stay here. I’ll go in.”

“Not without me,” argues Skulduggery. “What if she attacks _you?_ ”

“She only attacks me when I step into the fight you’re already having with her. I think she just really doesn’t like you.”

His façade is aghast. “What’s not to like about me?”

Her lips quirk into a smile. “How do you want me to answer that? Alphabetically, chronologically?”

“Oh, hush. Let me by.”

“No, for real.” She stands her ground. “You really should hang back.”

As Valkyrie turns to go it alone, Skulduggery pipes up, “Is it the face?”

She sharply looks over her shoulder. “What?”

“It has to be the face,” he reasons. “Have I always had this face when I speak with her?”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe _that’s_ what she doesn’t like.” He asks, “How do you know she attacks me fully aware of who I am?”

“I don’t know, Skulduggery, pick one,” she grumbles exasperatedly. “Your clothes, your voice? Me being nearby?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He holds up his hands in offering. “Let’s just test how she reacts to a changed variable.” With not much regard for standing out in a car park in a mortal space, Skulduggery flicks the façade off and on again. His current face, the one Valkyrie has been working with during all these loops, melts away and is promptly replaced by another.

Valkyrie studies it for a moment. The other one looks nicer, or maybe it’s that she’s more used to it. She sighs and throws up her hands, “Fine. When it turns out I’m right, I’m not gonna give you any tips on how to fight her.”

He places a hand over where his heart would be. “I don’t know how I’ll survive.”

She is right; it’s Skulduggery’s voice that sets Presley’s aunt off, but when she attacks, Valkyrie doesn’t stay out of it.

Delia starts by throwing her book with full force at Skulduggery’s head, where he would normally duck and it would fly right on by, except Valkyrie catches it out of the air instead and throws the book back. It goes crashing into the shelf as Delia lunges, her big hands outstretched, reaching to grab at Skulduggery. Valkyrie intercepts, catching one of the woman’s fists in her hand and the other in her side, better than in the stomach like last time, but still unideal. Skulduggery appears behind Delia with intent to box her ears, but that never works so to save him the failure Valkyrie throws the woman backwards over her hip, hurtling her right into the ground. Delia goes limp almost immediately.

“That was easy,” Skulduggery is going to say, but Valkyrie interrupts him by snapping her fingers in his dumb new face.

“Teenager filming from the second floor balcony, security being summoned from the back,” she fires off and turns back to Delia before he’s even left as the lady hoists herself up onto one knee, then springs back into a fighting stance.

“Why would you _protect_ him?” the aunt wants to know, but Valkyrie hasn’t yet come across an answer that will please her so she just gets straight back into it, sweeping her leg out to trip Delia up.

She snarls and makes all sorts of gross noises in her throat, the kind that suggests she has an issue with her saliva or some phlegm, and Valkyrie dances around her so she’ll stop facing the magazine rack, otherwise it’ll catch fire when Delia summons a flame.

The woman snaps her fingers and lobs a fireball into Valkyrie’s chest, which Valkyrie struggles to bat away – the necronaut suit can handle fire, but she’s not going to break it out in a mortal library – and as she’s occupied Delia comes forward and smacks her on her nose. Valkyrie swears and returns the hit, a good punch across the jaw, and Delia falls again.

“Goddamn it,” mutters Valkyrie, untangling her handcuffs from her belt. “Always with the face.”

From the ground, Delia groans in pain and paws around for a lost tooth. “It’s the least I could do,” she manages to huff.

“To the former Darquesse, I know.” With her boot, Valkyrie pushes Delia from lying on her side to her stomach, and keeps her knee on her back while she does the cuffs.

Skulduggery returns in the company of two security guards, talking very grandly as if he has the situation totally handled when it’s clear the guys want to pick him up and throw him as far as they can. Valkyrie hauls Delia to her feet and leaves her against a bookshelf; she comes over to Skulduggery and puts a hand on his shoulder, fixing him with a _look_ before addressing the guards.

“It’s all under control here – parole jumper, you know how it goes.” She elbows Skulduggery. “Forgive the rookie.”

“Doesn’t look like a rookie to me,” says the shorter of the guards with a face like he sucked on a lemon.

“Post-midlife crisis career change,” says Valkyrie as though it should be obvious. Skulduggery cannot stop himself from laughing.

In the back of the Bentley, Delia brings up her usual argument of having done nothing wrong, of minding her own business in public, to which Valkyrie agrees and says arresting her is never the plan, but assault and use of magic in a mortal space sort of necessitates it.

“How could you be so cruel to a grieving mother?” Delia hisses. “I've been homebound for weeks. I get only a few _hours_ to myself, I take myself off to the library, and what happens? I’m faced with this–” A vein pulses in her neck as she jerks her head at Skulduggery. “ _This_ abomination, and his mass-murdering _pet_.”

“I think she dislikes us equally,” suggests Skulduggery.

“You haven’t seen her when I keep out of it,” Valkyrie replies. “You’re right, she _doesn’t_ like me, but it’s in a different way. More pitying than vitriolic.”

“Would you not prefer the pity?”

“Is that a joke?”

“The ridiculousness of it did occur to me mid-sentence.”

“I should have known from the start,” seethes Delia. “You’re as monstrous as him. No longer a child.”

Valkyrie pays her a glance. “Never was one, Mrs G. I want to follow up with you about something you said yesterday.”

“We’ve never spoken before!”

“You said Phil had a–”

She writhes in fury but can’t do much more than stamp her feet. “Do not even _mention_ him to me!”

“Valkyrie,” says Skulduggery gently.

“I got it,” she replies with a wave, turning back as best she can in her seat. “I’m sorry, I know it’s still raw. Even when it’s been years it’ll still be raw. I really don’t mean to upset you.”

“How could you hope _not_ to?” cries Delia.

Valkyrie grimaces. “Yeah, that’s fair.” She faces the front again. Roarhaven is another twenty minutes away. “I just… It’s his clubhouse. I need to know where it is.”

“ _What are you–?!_ ” Shaking her head as she lowers it into her lap, Delia’s rage subsides somewhat and her voice falls flat. “How would you even...know about that.”

“I know it doesn’t look like it right now,” Valkyrie says imploringly, “but we’re really trying to get justice for Phil and his friends. Please, you _have_ to tell me where he and Martyr built the clubhouse.”

Delia says nothing else. Valkyrie writes this one off as a complete failure and keeps as much distance from Skulduggery as he’ll allow for the rest of the day. Militsa still doesn’t apologise when confronted.

* * *

The scheduling is tight, but with some corners cut she manages to get the Bentley in the car park twenty minutes earlier this time. Skulduggery is argumentative, suspicious, but he stays in the car while Valkyrie goes to wait at the entrance. And soon, _she_ appears.

“Excuse me, can I talk to you for a minute?”

Delia looks up; she watches her feet when she walks, something that doesn’t translate into battle. Her distant expression becomes one of surprise when she recognises Valkyrie, but rather than devolve into anger, she only settles her hard brow over her eyes.

“Valkyrie Cain.” Knowing, cautious. The way an average Gothamite might address Harvey Dent. “I’m not looking for trouble.”

“I’m not looking to give you any,” says Valkyrie, kicking off from her lean on the wall to stand before Presley’s aunt. “But I’ve got a...difficult subject to raise.”

Delia’s face falls and her shoulders droop. “Are you looking for who killed my son?”

“I am. And I’m close.”

She shuts her eyes and allows herself one more moment of vulnerability, then shakes herself and hardens up, coming to more resemble the Delia Valkyrie is already familiar with. “I’d like to return these books first, they’re overdue.”

And so this is how Valkyrie comes to be in the company of Presley’s aunt, sitting across from her at the table two rows away from where they’ve brawled several times, maintaining the peace. Delia nurses a cappuccino from the library cafe. Valkyrie stays on her best behaviour.

“I shouldn’t have let him move to Roarhaven.” Delia snuffles and snorts and Valkyrie offers a napkin. “My wife always hated that place, right from the beginning.”

The other Mrs G, who Valkyrie has only met once during these loops _and is not going to again_ , works in Dáil Éireann alongside some in-the-know mortals. Similar to her sister in Kells, she and her wife seem to prefer non-magical company, an idea which Presley themselves supported when Valkyrie mentioned it this morning.

“Makes sense, considering.” Valkyrie whirls her wrist. “Yknow, Erskine Ravel and all he had planned. Nasty stuff, eh?”

Delia nods in agreement but says nothing more of the city. “Phil was always so modern. So young.” She hides her eyes in her palm as Valkyrie figures it’s no wonder Delia saw her as a child if Phil had been young at sixty-five. “And his cousin, they were devastated. Those two were so dear to each other.”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about,” says Valkyrie, injecting some strained containment of urgency into her voice. “We at the…department,” she’ll have to hit herself later, “believe that Martyr Presley is also at risk.”

Delia’s head snaps up to face her. “Martyr; really?”

Valkyrie nods gravely. “I’ve been in contact with them over the course of the case, and with everything almost coming to a close… It’s all been too much, I think. They ran off somewhere remote to keep themselves safe, but you see, Mrs G, that’s just not wise. If Martyr wants to be safe, they need to be where I can watch them. The problem is that I don't know where they could’ve gone.” She opens her hands. “Hence…”

“How can I help?”

“Something from your son’s side of the investigation sparked my interest.” She breaks her eye contact and twiddles her fingers in a very innocent and fragile way. “Martyr was one of the last to be in contact with him. Over text message–”

Delia reels. “You looked in Phil’s _phone?_ ”

“To figure out who killed him, _relax_ ,” Valkyrie says, then bites her tongue. Brings it back in. “They were going somewhere, neither of them said where _exactly_ , but it was obviously a place they often went to hang out. To feel safe, probably. I don’t suppose you’d know of anything that fits that description?”

Blinking and wiping back snot, Delia thinks on it before sharply inhaling. “They did have someplace like that.”

Valkyrie widens her eyes in fake surprise. “Would you please tell me about it?” she barely keeps from asking through her teeth.

“It must have been...1983. I remember that because it was my hundred year wedding anniversary. Phil and Martyr built themselves a, what was it? A clubhouse. I think they wanted to host parties, invite girls over, but,” Delia smiles at the memory, obviously fond to her, “it didn’t work out that way. They went out there to play their Nintendos. My wife didn't care for screens in the house at the time.” Brightened somewhat, Delia pulls out her phone and waves it under Valkyrie’s nose. “And now look! Screens everywhere.”

“Ha ha yeah,” says Valkyrie. “Pretty crazy. Where’s the clubhouse?”

“Why do you need to–? Oh, _of course_ , Martyr might be there now! Please, allow me.” 

Delia goes scrounging around her purse, investigates her phone, then finally calls her wife to ask. Another five minutes and Valkyrie has an address written on a napkin. Her heart thunders.

“Oh my god. Thank you,” she says sincerely, standing up from the table. “You’re pretty alright when you’re not being violent.”

Delia’s brow furrows in confusion, but her little smile doesn’t fade. “So are you, Valkyrie. I hope that after everything you’ve been through you’re doing alright–”

“I am. Thanks.”

“–and staying away from Skulduggery Pleasant.”

Valkyrie returns the smile as she reaches over the table and grabs a fistful of Delia’s shirt. Like she weighs nothing at all, Valkyrie drags her out of her chair and lifts her over her head, and she throws Presley’s aunt into the nearest bookshelf with all the strength in her body. Baffled and terrified mortal faces begin to manifest in the corridors, trying to understand what has happened. Valkyrie just dusts her hands off and pockets the napkin, beginning her march back to the front doors.

“Bitch,” she mutters to herself.

She keeps her face as straight as she can while she slides into the passenger seat, feeling Skulduggery’s gaze on her, hearing questions he wants to ask but isn’t sure how to. He hesitates, then takes his hand off the steering wheel, and Valkyrie thinks that’s as much as she can torture him and she allows the beaming smile to burst free, brandishing the napkin out from her jacket.

“I got it!”

“You did?” The lowkey relief is a delight to hear.

“ _I did!_ This is _it_ , Skulduggery!”

“I’m very glad for you.” He takes the napkin from her, noticing the small, damp patch at the corner as he does so. He makes a noise of disgust and carefully puts it down on the dashboard, starting up the engine. “I estimate an hour’s drive.”

Valkyrie buckles herself in and slaps her knees rhythmically. “Hell yeah.”

She puts on loud music, and out of respect for the need for celebration, he lets it play for a while. Valkyrie smiles into her palm as she gazes out the window, awash with pride at her success, yet oddly calm in her stomach where she would have expected it to be doing flips. That’s what it did when they got hold of Presley’s transaction record, at least. Maybe that’s why it’s not doing it again; caution that the bottom will fall out again.

Skulduggery calls it quits during Mr Blue Sky and turns the volume way down. He spares her a glance while the red light will allow, then returns his attention to the road. “Would you kindly fill the gaps in my knowledge now, or will I have to wait until after we’ve dealt with Presley?”

Valkyrie clicks her tongue against her teeth, but does turn her head away from the door window so she can alternate between the front and him. “Sorry, I didn't mean to upset you by keeping it simple.”

“I’m not upset,” he lies.

“I will give you the whole rundown,” she promises with emphatic gesturing, “absolutely _everything_ , if you do me a huge favour.”

“What is it?”

“Don’t...” She points a finger gun out the windshield and provides accompanying blasting noises. “Don't shoot on sight.”

Skulduggery is quiet for a moment. “That is a huge favour,” he says.

“You can _do it_ ,” sighs Valkyrie, “just wait until they’ve seen us. You know, come in, hi how’s it going, we’ve got you right where we want you, _blam_.” She explains, “The Presley we’re going to meet isn’t the one that kidnapped me. They’re not even thinking about doing it. The one on the phone says I caught them by surprise – not that I fucking remember any of it.”

“I understand the feeling.”

“Mm.” She sinks into her seat. “It doesn’t matter how much they know anyway, just as long as it registers that we found them. Phone Presley will see that and it’ll be all over.”

“They are their own window into the simulation, is that it?”

She nods. “Loop Presley’s basically a camera.”

He gives a thoughtful hum. “Interesting.”

Valkyrie laughs a little and turns her head to look at him. “I know what you’re thinking,” she teases.

He doesn’t like the sound of that. “What am I thinking?”

“You’re thinking that if loop Presley acts as a camera, and if _real_ Presley preplanned what days they were gonna trap their victims in, then they’d have spent the entirety of those planned days hanging around the victim so that when it came to put them in the loop, they’d have a guarantee that they could keep track of them.”

“We’ve discussed this before, have we?”

“We’ve discussed everything,” Valkyrie says in a voice that’s a little too forlorn, so she puts extra lighthearted gusto into her next sentence. “It took me _so long_ to get them to admit they can’t see what I’m doing.”

“ _How_ long?” Skulduggery asks. That same serious tone, every time. “How long have you been trapped, Valkyrie?”

She catches her own eye outside in the side mirror, and quickly flickers her gaze away, down to her boots. “Not counting the actual _, real_ Thursday, I’ve lived this day thirteen times.”

He sits on this for a long time, to the point where she thinks he might not say anything at all, even starts to hope that that will be the case – but then, of course, he asks something else, and it is something he’s asked before, many times, not that that’s made her any better at anticipating it. “Are you okay?”

Valkyrie rolls her shoulders and goes back to looking out the window. They’re coming up on clearing the edge of this mortal town; closer and closer to the goal. “I am _so_ okay. More than okay. I’ve won that freak’s little game and I’m gonna get out of here.”

They don’t talk for seven minutes. Skulduggery pulls over, just so he can look her in the eyes when he speaks next.

“All said and done, this case is quite simple,” he says, somewhat hesitant as he’s fully aware that this probably will not go down well. “Presley has been conducting an experiment using multiple subjects, each of whom they kill after a varying period of time. You are the latest subject, with the condition that if you complete a task, you’ll be released.”

She just looks at him, keeping her mouth in a hard line, her teeth clenched.

“Have you considered the possibility that Presley gave every subject a task of their own, not just you, along with the promise to set them free if they completed it?”

Her lips tighten, she takes in a deep breath through her nose.

“Everyone has their own personal definition of freedom, Valkyrie. We’ve seen how warped those definitions can become.”

Valkyrie breathes all the air in her lungs out and shuts her eyes. She hangs her head.

“Please,” Skulduggery says with a hint of desperation. “Talk to me about this.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“ _Anything_.”

Valkyrie sees herself in her mind's eye, unstrapped from the bench but still lying on it, moved onto her stomach the same way she moved Presley’s aunt. The back of her head untouched for now, something in this vision tells her it will be as bad as Phil Dreary’s.

Yuck.

Back to reality, or whatever passes for it for now, she runs her fingers through her hair and scowls at the dashboard. “A smashed head is...such an ugly way to die – and so pathetic, too. After the life I’ve lived, you’d think I’d end up with better.” Valkyrie rubs her hands over her face, contemplating all the alternatives. “But it could be a lot worse.”

“Could it?”

“I think so, yeah.” Having already talked at length on the topic on a previous loop, Valkyrie isn’t eager to do so again, but she supposes it couldn’t hurt to mention, “The thing is, they sound pretty opposed to me dying.”

“ _Before_ completing their task, I’m sure they are. As for afterwards, we only need to look toward the bodies we’ve collected.” Skulduggery‘s fist clenches at his knee. “You don’t have to do it.”

She feels the urge to laugh. Or maybe scream, it’s hard to tell sometimes. “And live in my brain forever, doing the same day over and over? Waking up alone every morning, never able to reach Tanith, stuck working the same case with a partner simultaneously there and not there? All the while, don’t forget, my alleged girlfriend fucks someone else and I don’t even _feel_ anything!” Her fingers curl into claws, coming up to close around her throat. “I know it’s stupid to want to believe them, but literally what else can I do? Christ, it might even be _fourteen_ days I’ve done this, I don’t even know anymore – _and you still haven’t rescued me!_ ”

Skulduggery’s shoulders slump.

“I asked this morning, yesterday, the day before that and the day before that,” Valkyrie lists them off on her fingers. “And every time they laugh – they fucking _laugh_ at me! That _dumbshit psychopath_ who killed their own cousin who they apparently loved so goddamn much, _they_ laugh at _me_ , and I become more convinced you’re dead – or worse! Trapped too.” She shuffles over in her seat, “Which I know is unlikely, but still,” opens the car door and swings one leg out. “I’ll take whatever freedom Martyr has in mind for me, thanks.”

He grabs her wrist. “No, you _won’t._ ”

“You want this to go on?” Valkyrie snaps at him.

“I want you to be _alive,_ ” counters Skulduggery.

“God, you’re the worst!”

She breaks his grip and hops out of the Bentley, slamming the door shut behind her. Skulduggery isn’t far behind coming out of the driver’s seat, darting after Valkyrie as she kicks off into a sprint, a running start while her magic wakes up. White lightning crackles and surrounds her. She jumps and is flying, rocketing, tearing down the road with no end in sight.

She can feel it in the air, him already gaining on her, adjusting his position so he can come up beside her. The wind pushes back against her, and it’s a cheap move but still an effective one, so Valkyrie changes course and shoots straight up instead. Skulduggery follows alongside, having lost his hat at some point. He tries to reach for her and she veers left, keeps going.

The road ends at a little mortal hamlet dotted with barns; Valkyrie aims low with intent on swooping over, but she doesn’t get that far. Skulduggery’s kept pace and still been trying to slow her, successful at least in getting a hand on her hip. The touch is unexpected and her feelings are disgustingly complicated, so she halts her acceleration, angles herself toward the earth. She could easily accomplish a clean landing from here, but that’s not going to happen. She’s going down rough and taking him with her.

Valkyrie allows Skulduggery to hook his arm around her waist and keep her steady, and after a moment she returns the gesture, giving him a firm hug – and then she pulls down with all her strength, kicks out and knocks him askew. In a tangle of bones and limbs, they plummet out of the sky and to the field below, leaving torn grass and disrupted dirt in their wake.

Valkyrie just lies on the ground for a little while, holding Skulduggery close and arranging her thoughts. Skulduggery hangs on, too, only very gently patting her hair, smoothing it out. They release from each other while still making contact, her fingertips at his arm, his hand stuck under her back, and air is still and all is calm.

“Ow,” says Valkyrie.

“You have no one but yourself to blame, but yes.” Skulduggery fusses with his rumpled, but not ruined, jacket. “Ow.”

She grimaces; at the situation, at him, at herself. At the rock digging into her shoulder blade. Valkyrie turns to lie on her side, jutting her hip out and draping her arm over it. Her other hand hovers at Skulduggery’s head, pointing with conviction.

“I'm _going_ to see Presley, and you’re letting me.”

With a grunt and an unfortunate creak, Skulduggery props himself up on one elbow. He looks out to the assortment of modest buildings beyond the field, where it’s mostly cows out but there are a couple of dots that could be people, standing around and trying to work out if a meteorite just hit. Valkyrie looks out too, switching into her aura vision as she goes. A plain but still pretty palette, yellows and mild oranges intermingling with flecks of gold. In her peripheral vision where Skulduggery is; burning, passionate red. Down near a line of manicured trees, the yellow muddies with a brownish-green, buried in the ground right below her destination. The clubhouse.

“I’m not _letting_ you,” Skulduggery replies. “I’m coming _with_ you.”

Valkyrie’s vision melts back to the standard and she turns her head to him, smiling a little. “Cool. Glad we worked that one out.”

He does the slightest of head tilts. A concession.

“You’ve been wrong before, anyway,” she goes on, climbing up to her feet and dragging him up by the arm. “The bank, the alternate timelines. And hey, it’s okay! It’s okay to be wrong.”

Skulduggery stands up straight and on his own, but doesn’t take his arm back, which is nice because Valkyrie likes holding it. “I don’t know what either of those examples are in reference to.”

In fact, while they have the perfect opportunity, she loops their arms together as they head off, fumbling down the field in a very post-crash landing style. “Looks like a couple of minutes until we get to the place,” Valkyrie says. “I’ll tell you on the way.”

The clubhouse is a long, wood-panelled granny flat type of building with a big garage attached to the end. There’s a house close by that’s been fenced off in recent decades; the first Irish home of Phil Dreary and his mothers, now a separate property from the clubhouse and lived in by mortals. Unbothered by the proximity to them, however, Dreary and their cousin continued to make use of the place to whatever end, all the way up until his death.

It’s obvious that Presley frequents the place, what with the small garden arranged nicely around the front door. From revisiting the florist’s, Valkyrie has learned that where the third victim had enjoyed their work and been good with people as well as flowers, Presley preferred the latter. She saw multiple instances over surveillance footage of Jude allowing them to take plant cuttings for themselves, and now those cuttings grow here as Jude’s body decomposes in a private Roarhaven morgue. The magenta orchids are the same as the ones Presley had been arranging in their apartment on Monday – for Dreary, they’d said.

Valkyrie’s thrown around ideas of Dreary having been involved in Presley’s experiments not so much as a victim rather a willing participant, but it’s all speculation. For being the guy that seemingly kicked all this off, she really doesn’t know much about him. She and Skulduggery walk down the middle of the road, a grubby, rocky path that no one has seen fit to touch in ages. Just as it seemed from across town on the field, there’s hardly anyone around, and no one comes out of the woodwork to question these two strangers about their sudden appearance. Probably for the best.

“Makes you wonder why they didn’t bury the bodies out here,” comments Valkyrie. “I get that it’s too close to the hideout, but come on. Couple of miles out that way,” she points to indicate, “they’d have been set for ages.”

“We would still be looking for each victim,” Skulduggery points out. “We’d have ended up here eventually. Apparently you already did.”

“Yeah, still wondering about that.”

They continue down the poor excuse for a road and come to a stop at the garage of the clubhouse, its driveway matching in style to the rest of the ground in this area. The door is a shutter, halfway open with the tail end of a minivan sticking out; blaring music emanates from the building proper and echoes around the garage, but from where Valkyrie and Skulduggery are standing it’s no more than noise.

Presley strolls out of the garage holding a cardboard box in their arms, whistling as they gaze about without actually paying attention to what they’re seeing, an objectively awful habit for a criminal to have. They start to turn, bringing the box around to their garden, and as they do so their eyes fall upon their guests. It takes them a second to register them, and they stop mid-step, mid-note, freezing in place. Like they think that if they don’t move, they won’t be seen.

“Hi, Martyr,” Valkyrie calls over, unravelling from Skulduggery and coming up the driveway. “Don’t freak out.”

“Miss– Mrs Cain!” cries Presley in the highest pitch she’s heard from them yet. “I’m not freaking out, it’s, um, so good to see you again. Mr Pleasant, you too! What...what…” They turn their head from side to side, as if awaiting an ambush. “What brings you here– out...here?”

“There doesn’t have to be a reason for us to be here, Presley.” Skulduggery almost sounds friendly at first. “Of course, there _is_ one, we just don’t have to tell you.” He approaches and peers into the box Presley is holding, filled with dirt wriggling with worms. “One could say we’re sightseeing. Seeing the sights. That’s the definition of sightseeing, you understand. You _do_ understand, don’t you, Presley? I only ask because of how very dim you look.”

“Yes, sir, I understand.”

He taps the façade off and turns his skull to Valkyrie. “May I?”

“Little bit longer,” she says to him, then back to Presley, “I was going to say this might be hard for you to believe, but actually it might be really easy, considering you’re the one responsible for it. This day has happened before, quite a few times. We’re in the middle of one of your experiments. You follow?”

Presley blinks and takes a step back. “Oh, that’s. That’s fascinating.” They look to Skulduggery for permission, “Can I put this down?” and when he motions at them, they relieve themselves of the box so they can rub their hands together. They wet their lips, working up the courage to look Valkyrie in the eye. “Are you the subject? I assume you are, because you’re…” Presley glances between their guests. “Flesh and blood.”

“Yeah, Martyr,” says Valkyrie with a sigh. “I’m the fleshy, bloody subject.” 

“ _Fascinating_ ,” they say again. “Why wouldn’t I–” They take a step closer to Valkyrie and immediately halt when they feel the cold press of Skulduggery’s revolver on their temple.

“That’s close enough,” he says.

Holding up their hands and staring straight forward, Presley nods. “Yes, sir,” they say, and just as soon seem to forget about him as they’ve done so. “Was this an impromptu loop, Mrs Cain? That’s the only reason I can think of that it would be _today_.”

“I accept Ms or Detective, and yes.”

“That’s so exciting!” Presley claps their hands now, their face totally lit up. “How’s it been? How many times? I bet you’ve come here to see how it works, I’d love to show you. I think it would get you a good leg up on the case as well! Just think, in a few dozen loops’ time you could have me arrested by breakfast. Wouldn’t that be incredible? That would be your day perfected, wouldn’t it? I love that idea, a perfected day.”

Lowering his gun but not putting it away, Skulduggery comments to Valkyrie, “I imagined them being more abashed.”

She offers up her hands. “Better than being coy about it. Don’t get a lot of murderers who want to show their work these days.” To Presley, “Keep the talking to a minimum, though, you annoy the hell out of me.”

Presley treats the operation as if they’re giving Valkyrie and Skulduggery a tour, flouncing back into the garage while their guests have to duck beneath the shutter. They hurry forward into the next room and Skulduggery’s instinct is to stay close behind, but Valkyrie takes his hand in hers and holds on, and he settles. The music is more clear now, Elvis Presley’s Suspicious Minds, which switches off just as soon as Valkyrie identifies it.

From the garage, there’s a short hallway that leads left into a couple of small rooms, neither of which Presley remarks upon. The rest of the interior is one big room, one corner resembling a little sitting area, a lounge room with some carpeting, with the rest clearly acting as the central hub for Presley’s machinations. A laboratory of sorts. Orange-tiled floor, a half dozen monitors and two server towers, a workbench adorned with tools both for engineering and gardening, and a rotary telephone. A large slab of a wooden bench in the centre of it all, and an unconscious body draped across it; Unhealthy Sconce, the mutual friend of Phil Dreary, Cue and Hamson Jude, who reported them all missing what feels like ages ago, missing themselves as of Wednesday the 19th.

Valkyrie looks at Skulduggery. Skulduggery looks back. They both look at Presley, standing before them with their hands held at their stomach, looking pleased and proud and ready to present.

“What were you planning on doing with them today?” Skulduggery asks.

“Oh, I’m still in prep, I only just got them here. They’re probably hooked in _outside_ of the loop by now – or they might not be! Ms Cain might have taken their place.” Presley sheepishly admits, “Then they’d be dead, I think.”

Valkyrie can’t look away from Sconce on the slab, at the straps and buckles attached only to the edges of the wood, not yet the person. They’ve been left untouched but for the sleeve of their left arm rolled up, where Presley has inserted a thin tube into the crook of their elbow, something to keep them from waking. She feels bad for Sconce, yet removed from them. She’s trying not to focus only on herself at this time, but with the reminder of the real world outside the loop, as well as Presley’s admission of what they might have done with Sconce, Valkyrie sees them there and thinks of them as already dead and gone. She is looking at the place where _she_ is lying right now; where she _has been_ lying for almost two weeks. Strapped down, hooked in.

Skulduggery squeezes her hand and her blood starts pumping again.

“You sure moved on from Hamson fast,” Valkyrie says scathingly. “They were dead on _Sunday_ , weren’t they?”

“A poor job on dumping the body, as well,” adds Skulduggery. “We found them two and a half hours later. Can’t get better at everything with practise, can you, Presley?”

Presley bites the inside of their mouth, flexing their hands at their sides as they look every which way. “I was driving through Roarhaven when I realised...I didn’t know their address.”

“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

They start to try to explain how it is, but neither Valkyrie nor Skulduggery listen. She unlinks her fingers from his and goes up to where the monitors are lined up against the wood wall. Quite flatly, she asks, “Which one does what.”

Presley seems to consider coming closer to her, but then they worriedly glance at Skulduggery and remain where they are instead, pointing along the row. “That one; that’s the heart rate, brain activity, and vitals of the subject. You see that panel there? I use that to set up a wireless connection to the subject, that’s all done vitakinetically.” They give a shy little smile and shrug. “Doctor magic stuff. How _have_ your vitals been, if I can ask?”

“Low brain activity early on,” Valkyrie says, squinting at her reflection in the dark screen. “I took a day off.”

“What a waste of time,” they splutter, then tense up. “Sorry, that’s... That’s the,” they laugh nervously, “that’s the one where I’d be able to see my point of view from in the loop. That’s where I’ll be watching right now, looking at you looking at the screen. Oh my god! Imagine if I set up Unhealthy’s loop right now, that would be so–”

“That’s great.” She faces Skulduggery, seeing that he’s turned away, looking towards the sitting corner. In a completely different tone, to make it _absolutely clear_ that she’s not speaking to Presley anymore, she asks, “What’s over there?”

“That’s the–” Presley starts to answer anyway.

“Dreary,” Skulduggery talks over them, glancing over his shoulder at her as she comes up on his side.

Valkyrie looks and can’t help but scoff in disbelief, mostly at herself for not noticing – although upon entry her attention had been drawn to the lab, so she’s not going to give herself a hard time over it. Skulduggery’s right; it appears that Phil Dreary is over there, lying asleep on the lounge. Covered in a quilted blanket, his face perfectly peaceful and his head completely intact. Except he can’t be there. That can’t be so.

“Okay,” says Valkyrie, pointing over there. “Wait.” She snaps the fingers of her other hand at Presley. “Is that–?”

“Phil’s reflection,” they supply.

Her heart sinks, her throat closes up. Valkyrie stares at the man on the lounge, her eyes wide and her mind racing, imagining all that this could mean. A reflection replacing the person they’re supposed to be reflecting, a concept dangerous and terrifying, and so close to home. Valkyrie sees Presley’s cousin and cannot think of anyone else but her own.

“Valkyrie?”

She blinks and snaps out of it, looks at Skulduggery. “Huh? Oh, yeah, go on.”

The words have barely left her mouth when he shoots Presley; they drop on the tile floor, dead before they could consider the idea. Had it not occurred to them that this was going to happen? Regardless of what they thought, they think nothing now, and Valkyrie sneers at the body, feeling some gratification in it, even knowing it’s not really them. She realises like a minute too late that she probably should have asked Presley about their challenge, if Skulduggery is right and by completing it they’re only going to kill her – but it’s a bit late now. Oh well. She’ll find out very soon.

She lifts her head from Presley on the floor to Sconce on the slab. “Can we get City Guard out here? Some Cleavers?”

Skulduggery regards the scene for a moment, holstering his revolver as he does so. “Valkyrie,” he says tentatively, “it won’t do them any good.” Like all instances of himself during the loops, he’s taken to the idea of not being real very easily, not had very many complaints about it. None that he’s voiced, anyway.

Valkyrie’s legs are lead, but the first step makes it easier to continue. She touches the tube connecting into Sconce’s arm, working out what she should do with it. “I want to get them out of here anyway,” she says.

“And after that?”

Valkyrie shuts her eyes tight. This has been a most distressing experience. “Get me out, too.”

Skulduggery does not leave her alone for one minute for the rest of the day, and she so appreciates it. They oversee the investigation and subsequent raid of the clubhouse, the arrest of the reflection, until they’re both sufficiently sick of the whole place, the whole thing, and get out of there. In her home and warmed by her dog, she gets bold enough – not too much, but _enough_ – to demand he spend all night with her, trapping him in a makeshift cage of her own limbs. He hardly says anything about it, as if it’s not even happening, as he tends to do.

When it’s appropriate, he asks for clarification on Militsa and oddly enough it lifts Valkyrie’s spirits. It’s just nice to get the chance to vent about all that shit again, as well as be continually amused by how Skulduggery says the same things. Even if she had not had this conversation before, she knows she would still feel safe having it, just as she knows she’ll always have him – which Valkyrie figures is why it’s been easy to let that romance go. And then she can actually _in-real-life_ let it go, just as soon as she’s out.

Valkyrie thinks back on _Edge Of Tomorrow_ as well as _Groundhog Day_ , aware that the protagonists of both have their respective love interests who they fall for the longer they spend in their time loop. She realises she didn’t do something like that, and on reflection, it's almost disappointing. She had her last straw with Gnosis, sure, but no other prospects popped up at all. Maybe there’s just no more room for it, her heart all filled up and likewise locked down. She decides to stick to one night stands from now on, at least until she gets stupid again and thinks she could try being in love with anyone that’s not Skulduggery Pleasant.

And she will. She will get stupid again.

But that’s alright, because obviously what she has with Skulduggery is satisfactory as is, or else she’d have attempted something in her loops. Valkyrie is sure of it, what they have is perfect for them; even if it’s not what it could be, if only it could be. What she could have made it be, if she’d been willing to waste a day, risking embarrassment that wouldn’t even be permanent to have a solid answer.

It’s better that she didn’t. This way she doesn’t have to know if it’s _no_.

And so, in an absolutely platonic manner with no hidden feelings or secret meanings behind it, Valkyrie and Skulduggery, super best friends and nothing else, cuddle as she falls asleep, certain that she’ll wake on Friday morning.

* * *

She became aware of Xena sleeping at her feet, and all at once Valkyrie was hit with panic and relief, followed by irritation at herself for forgetting her responsibilities, and grateful as ever for her best friend. This wasn’t the first time she’d stayed at Skulduggery’s and left him to deal with her dog, and it would not be the last. Valkyrie shuffled under the covers, patting around, and Xena rose to greet her. Sitting up on one elbow, Valkyrie scratched behind Xena’s ears, squishing her face affectionately.

“Did Mr Pleasant have to go pick you up?” she asked in that particular tone of voice reserved for babies and beloved pets. “Did he? Did he have to go get my special girl?”

Xena shoved one of her big paws into Valkyrie’s breast.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Valkyrie, throwing off the covers and reaching for her nearest jacket. She took about five steps out of her bedroom before she came across Skulduggery, who she felt obligated to hit on the arm for his trouble. “Hey, thanks.”

“Your car is serviced and ready to go,” he replied, and at that she barked a laugh.

“What, like, it’s here?”

He nodded once. “For you to take.”

Valkyrie made a face. “We’re not going in together?”

“And leaving that beast here? Most certainly not.”

“ _Beast?_ That’s my _baby!_ ” To demonstrate how seriously she felt about this, Valkyrie knelt down beside Xena and wrapped her arms around her, burying her face in the dog’s thick coat.

Skulduggery stood there and watched this without comment.

She offered up another argument, “You know she wouldn’t wreck the place.”

“I do know that,” he said. “Because she won’t be here to do it.” He turned and started walking away, heading for the stairs. “I’ll meet you at the office.”

“Come with me for the ride?” Valkyrie called.

Just a skull peering through the railing, Skulduggery tried to hide the amusement in his voice, “Knowing what rides you’ll accept I must pass.”

She guffawed and made to return to her bedroom. “You’re a prick.”

“And I really do have to go right this second,” he went on, disappearing downstairs. “Gable has surfaced to seek her wife’s freedom, and it seems someone needs to explain to her that public acts of violence are generally considered…” He paused like he needed to remember. “Bad.”

“Oh shit.” Valkyrie hopped back out with one leg in her pants, the other flapping wildly to Xena’s delight. “Are they?”

“I’m shocked, too.” She heard the front door opening. “I’ll see you soon.”

Valkyrie finished dressing, finally took Xena out for a wee, then locked up Cemetery Road and flung herself and her dog into her car. At Grimwood House she allowed herself a detour, changing into fresh clothes and making one of the worst coffees she had ever been responsible for in her life. She kissed Xena on her pretty little head, and then returned to the road. There was a new voicemail waiting on her phone; she played it over the speaker.

“Hey Val, it’s me, no need to pick up, not urgent,” came Tanith’s voice, significantly more sober. “Just letting you know, I have _finally_ returned to sanity after completely blacking out the other night. Yeah, I know; _me_ , blacking out.” A pause and a distant exhale, Tanith switching ears to put her phone to. “I noticed I gave you a call during my dead hours so I wanted to follow up with a general apology for...that. If I said something bad, I am so sorry. Feel free to tell me what it was, but maybe don’t, actually. Up to you. Though if you _do_ make me hear the dumb shit I said, I might just have to torture you with everything I remember Serpine saying about _you_.” She laughed a little. “Alright, chat soon, give Suds my love.”

Valkyrie smiled to herself for a few minutes after that and resolved not to discuss Tanith’s previous message _at all_ when they spoke next. Shortly afterwards, Skulduggery called.

There had been some developments in Roarhaven. He’d spoken with the aunts of Martyr Presley, apparently cleared things up with them; moreso Gable than Delia, who could barely stand to be in the same room as him, even with her wife present to guard her from him and all the threat he posed. Concerned to learn of Presley’s possible involvement in the case, Gable was quick to divulge the location of a clubhouse her late son and his cousin had built, a generally reliable place to find either of them, and she told Skulduggery to wish Valkyrie well – rather than the both of them, strangely – on the search for her nibling. Skulduggery told Valkyrie what a nibling was and she briefly forgot how to breathe, but thankfully remembered as he passed on the relevant address.

The plan was not interesting; drive there, wait for Skulduggery, look for Presley. Valkyrie was still on the fence about them being the culprit on this one; on one hand it was so obvious, what with their connection to all the victims and having lied about it in one case. Occam’s razor, all that stuff. But on the other hand, as Valkyrie remembered of her interaction with them on Monday, they were so _twerpish_. And granted, a person being a twerp did not mean they couldn’t also be a murderer, but that was simply the vibe Valkyrie was getting.

She parked on the shitty, pebbly road of the hamlet and waited for Skulduggery to appear. From where she was sitting, the clubhouse seemed unoccupied, the garage shutter closed, no lights on inside. A garden of orchids and an unorganised selection of succulents lay out the front.

Over at Corrival in Roarhaven, Militsa must have been on a break or between classes, because she called Valkyrie. Valkyrie looked at her phone and didn’t know whether to answer or not, still sore about the night before, and eventually it stopped ringing. A minute later a message came in, something about Militsa wanting to talk about something really important when Valkyrie had the time, but Valkyrie did not. She’d just spotted an elbow and a flash of green hair around the corner of the clubhouse, and she was in the process of abandoning her car to chase that flash.

Presley was walking a circuit the back way around the building, carrying a garden hose, and Valkyrie followed, watched, made herself scarce – as scarce as she could, dressed entirely in black out in a prairie. Presley opened up the shutter door of the garage and went in, whistling, and in a minute a song started to blare from within the clubhouse.

Valkyrie checked her phone for an update from Skulduggery, but there was nothing. She looked back down the road, overthinking whether her car stood out as not belonging, wondering if it was really obvious. She glanced up into the window of the nearby house, catching the eye of a kid. She flashed her teeth in a guilty smile and raised a finger to her lips, and the kid made some very important-looking hand motions back at her. She didn’t really get the specifics but she was pretty sure it was a response of solidarity, and with that approval received, Valkyrie slipped into the garage and made her way into the clubhouse.

Hound Dog played at a volume that was, frankly, obscene.

Sconce was splayed out and strapped down to a huge bench of sorts, stripped to their underclothes and poorly covered with a sheet, and Presley was leaning over them, screwing a small plug, barely the width of a needle, into their neck.

Lightning crackled in Valkyrie’s hand, and she raised her arm but did not fire, because there was machinery everywhere. She couldn’t potentially risk Sconce’s safety like that. Presley lifted their head and went utterly boggle-eyed.

“ _Oh!_ ” they cried, and Valkyrie blasted them in the chest, hurtling them backwards, yanking the plug clean out of Sconce’s neck. Presley went crashing and clattering to the floor, and Valkyrie was standing over them in moments.

“I don’t even know what the fuck to begin,” she hissed. “So let’s start simple. You’re under arrest.”

“That’s fair,” said Presley, offering up their wrists – then they saw something coming up behind Valkyrie and abandoned that venture, ducking back to the tile floor as their cousin’s reflection struck her with a heavy pipe. He wrapped one arm around her neck and held and held until she stopped struggling.

* * *

Her eyes snap open and her hands go over her body, reaching behind, to her back, feeling the hit as if it were fresh. That was Friday, she realises. That was what happened on Friday, how she came to be sent back in time in a purely cosmetic fashion. But it should be over now. She sits up and sees Xena lying at the end of her bed – and she screams.

Valkyrie launches out of bed, shouting and cursing and giving her poor dog the fright of her life. She throws open her bedroom door and races down, out, out of the goddamn house, into the yard, where the fucking squirrel is waiting for her, and she can already hear Presley laughing as she roars up into the heavens. 

She is still in the loop. She _should not_ still be in the loop. There were two options for her: be freed or be killed, _that was it_ . _She’s not supposed to be here anymore._

She can’t see, can’t think, can’t breathe; she feels her magic all around her, knowing if she lets this continue she’ll rocket to the moon. This is growing out of control, this is spiralling too quickly, this is energy she should be spending elsewhere, _calm down–_

Xena nips her on the leg and Valkyrie all but shuts off. Her white lighting, the big, powerful streaks coming from her hands, her arms, her face, her eyes, marking the morning sky with her desperation – they all fizzle and die, fade away. She makes a controlled drop onto her knees, and Xena sits and nuzzles and licks her, whining and being generally distressed. That’s why it’s good to have a dog; while Valkyrie works on settling her, assuring her, she’s doing the exact same thing for herself.

After some soothing pats and deep breaths, Valkyrie scrunches her eyes closed and opens them to the light of the day. She looks left, right, all around the yard, all around the world. The simulated world.

Yet again.

She doesn’t care about getting dirt or whatever on the carpet or Gordon’s old rugs as she trudges back inside. She hears her phone ringing from her bedroom and doesn’t even get a kick of energy from it, just keeps going at her own pace. Valkyrie gets on her bed and answers her phone on speaker so she can put it down and not touch it, just lie here and close her eyes.

“Minor– Some _minor_ complications on my side of things, Ms Cain!” announces Presley in their awful voice, scratched up by some interfering static. “I’m terribly sorry, don’t think I’ve reneged on you – I saw you in the last loop, and it was incredible, just incredible! Fantastic work!”

“You said,” says Valkyrie evenly, “you would let me go.”

“Well, yes, that’s the thing.” Keyboard tapping, the flicking of switches. They sound in a bit of a panic. “Can’t do that right now. Rest assured, everything is okay–” She hears distant thumping, something from behind a wall, or a door. “Everything should be okay.”

Her arm draped over her eyes, Valkyrie shakes her head. “You can’t keep me in here. I’ll find a way out. I’m going to win this. Arrested by breakfast in a few loops? How about _tomorrow_ , you freak, would that make you happy?”

“No, no, please. Remain calm. You’ll be out very soon. Very soon!” In a mutter, more to themselves than her, “Bastard doesn’t realise how delicate this operation is!"

She sits up, still shaking her head with her face in her hands, trying to collect her thoughts. “That thing, the reflection? He’s not your cousin, Martyr. He won’t ever be.”

Presley does not respond to this. The line is dead.

After sunset and a phone call to confirm, Skulduggery arrives with food for her. It’s not a judgement on his part, she’s pretty sure, but she knows it’s only because he thinks she hasn’t eaten at all. His skull looks so sheepish when he sees the remains of her dishes in the sink.

He states his reason for being here; he’s concerned for her mental health, and no amount of assurances that _she’s okay_ will ever be enough for him. He has respected her request to give her some space and do his day as he would, but that’s over now, and he is here. If she needs to talk, he will listen. If she wants to listen, he will talk. Whatever she wants, he’ll do it.

“Except leave,” Skulduggery clarifies, and Valkyrie grins.

The thing is, and she has no problem telling him this, she really is fine. For the time being. Alongside giving herself a well-earned day off to sit and rest her mind and body, Valkyrie has already been scheming. She’s got faith in herself coming out of her bloody ears, and still hope left in him, always. But the surrounding mechanics are all kind of complicated to explain, and she doesn’t feel like doing it right now. Just as long as Skulduggery understands, even just a little bit, that she’s working hard through something and needs his patience.

She thinks he does.

They watch _Edge of Tomorrow_ , and when Valkyrie belts out the chorus to Love Me Again, Skulduggery sings with her.

* * *

The Bentley has some trouble maneuvering around the blockade of vehicles, the swarm of dispatched vans and trucks and their Sanctuary agent owners. They outnumber the residents of the area twofold, yet do well to keep the mortals from being alerted; there’s a fresh set of Sensitives out in the field today, following the paths left by Geoffrey Scruitinous and Philomena Random, and they appear to be doing well. But as fine a job that all these people may be doing, Skulduggery does not have the patience to continue navigating this maze of cars and sorcerers, so he parks the Bentley in the middle of the terrible excuse for a road and forges ahead on foot.

He absorbs the details of the unimpressive building and its accompanying garage, takes note of its proximity to one of the homes here, and then forgets it all when he sees Valkyrie standing out the front of the taped-off clubhouse. She is faced away from him, standing at a slight bend, poking at the tallest of the orchids in the garden. Reverie Synecdoche comes out the front door of the place, says a few words to Valkyrie, then continues out on her way, not before seeing Skulduggery and paying him an obscure acknowledgement. Delightful woman, she is.

Skulduggery would probably have an easier time stepping over the tape, but he lifts it and ducks underneath instead. His footfalls should be silent on the grass but Valkyrie hears him coming anyway, and looks over her shoulder at him in anticipation.

“Haven’t _you_ been busy,” he says, circling her, narrowly avoiding her open hand, and coming to a stop at her side. “Who are you and what have you done with my Valkyrie?”

“Bugger off.” She swats at him again, smirking. “I am well and truly _done_ with alternate selves.”

Skulduggery takes a quick peek back the way he came, over to where Dreary’s reflection has been detained. “Most understandable.” He nudges her. “But you’ve still yet to let me in on what’s happening here.”

“What do you mean? We spoke on the phone, the case is–”

“Not the case. _You_.”

“Oh.” Valkyrie’s gaze flutters down and away from him, her pretty face momentarily caught in deep thought. When she speaks again, she’s teasing him. “I didn’t know you thought I was _that_ rubbish at my job.”

“Only partially.”

Skulduggery wants to see the interior, so he takes a step toward the front door and waits a half second for her to come along. He’s missed most of the excitement, and the room described as Presley’s laboratory has been almost entirely cleared out. There lies the remains of a server tower in the corner, and there are tears in the walls where hiding spots among the insulation have been discovered. Tiles have been dug up from the floor and dumped unceremoniously upon the surface of the large bench in the middle of it all. It all seems so plain, which is one of the worst things a sinister operation can be. He runs a finger over one of the tables against the wall, tracing a crack in the wood where tiny sprouts have already begun to push through.

He looks over at Valkyrie, standing on the other side of it all, close to the empty, carpeted area. She holds herself strong and confident and regards the scene in her usual way; with practised impassivity and obvious empathy. Perhaps the latter is only obvious to him nowadays, and people are generally taken in by the former.

She looks at him like she knows he’s staring.

“Thanks for, you know,” she says, whirling her wrist. “Going and doing the boring stuff, the real investigating.”

“Investigation isn’t boring, it’s invigorating,” argues Skulduggery. “I quite enjoy rummaging around other people’s belongings and asking invasive questions.”

Valkyrie’s mouth twists as she smiles but doesn’t entirely want to, and she reiterates, “No, but for real. Thanks for taking that while I was out here.”

He pretends not to be chuffed, striding over to where she stands near the hall. “I should be thanking you for your part of things, as mysterious in origin as they are.”

“Go on, then.”

Skulduggery sharply turns his head from looking down the passage back to her face. She grins and readies up to hit him again, and he quickly throws it out there like a shield, “Thank you.”

There’s something about how she looks when she’s proud of herself and not afraid to show it; there’s nothing like it in the world. 

When he asks about it, Valkyrie points him to the room that will lead him down to the basement, but does not accompany him there. After seeing it for himself, he understands why, and later when she describes how she saw it in her aura-vision, he understands further. The growth beneath the clubhouse, fed by insecurities and resentments; a raw, emotional and magical cancer in the roots, creating a terrible poison on the land, the plants, the people who operated here. The High Sanctuary has taken samples, and the gaps in the toxicology reports are sure to be filled in.

As the sun dips lower in the afternoon sky, more Sanctuary agents clear out. Messages come in from those who have already returned to Roarhaven, sharing developments as it’s decided on what to do with Presley and Dreary, updating Sconce’s condition. The workers whose job it will be to tear down the clubhouse and remove the growth overnight come in, and it seems that Skulduggery and Valkyrie are needed here no longer. As they return to their vehicles, both left haphazardly in the road, she turns back to look at the building one last time.

“I don’t want to have to come back here,” Valkyrie sighs.

Skulduggery’s hand twitches at his side – a startling movement, considering he has no nerves to prompt it – before he reaches out and touches her on the small of her back. “You don’t have to,” he says.

She turns and speaks much more brightly, to such an extent her previous comment may not have even happened. “Mind if I bring Xena over tonight?”

He grumbles performatively, because he has to. “You have your own house.”

“Yeah, but I like yours better.”

Skulduggery had already known this, somewhere in his mind, but hearing it is surprising, and nice.

He occupies one end of a sofa, picking through the regularly updating transcript of Presley’s ongoing interrogation, but then Valkyrie then comes in; freshly showered and sporting one of her comfortable jerseys, armed with a book of Gordon’s and a plate of biscuity snacks he knows she rarely allows herself anymore. She parks herself on the other end of the sofa and swings her bare legs up on his lap, and now Skulduggery is not so much reading as he is just looking at his phone.

The casual intimacy of it is wonderful and terrible, and he strongly believes he shouldn’t experience it, nor attach any unnecessary meaning where it doesn’t need to exist. Skulduggery relocates a highlighted section in the transcript of the florist long-windedly attempting to explain the full nature of their temporal experiments, reads it over again, and prepares to discuss it with Valkyrie so he doesn’t have to feel like he is only indulging in having her near.

Valkyrie, however, rebuffs him. “I really do _not_ want to hear any more about the stupid _time loop_ stuff.” She makes air quotes and rolls her eyes, and Skulduggery can see that this is an important matter to her, but they’ve hardly spoken about this aspect of the case at all. “I just want to sit here,” she gestures all around her, “turn off my brain, and chill out in the company of my favourite person. Just for now, _okay?_ ”

She shouldn’t say things like that, but just for now, yes. That might be okay. Skulduggery picks up a tome relevant to the ongoing religious complications of the magic world, solely because it is within reach and he doesn’t want to get up. 

Valkyrie reads for forty-seven minutes in that position, smiling into her late uncle’s work and sprinkling crumbs on the floor that her dog stealthily takes care of. Xena eventually settles across the room on the big cushion Skulduggery bought her so she would keep off the furniture, which the dog and its owner seems to have misinterpreted as a gesture of affection rather than practicality. Said owner readjusts to sit right up beside him, leaning heavily on his shoulder.

Soon enough, she turns the pages with longer and longer intervals between them, until she apparently ceases reading altogether, and Skulduggery would think she’s fallen asleep if it weren’t for the pattern of her breath. He leaves her be, continuing to count the words in this book, until Valkyrie rearranges her legs and leans off him, fussing with her hair a moment. Then she gathers her hands at her knees and faces him.

“Do you have something to say?” asks Skulduggery without looking up, foolishly hoping she will finally explain the _hunch_ she claimed to have woken with that allowed her to close the case so effectively. He will accept an answer that incorporates her Sensitivity, so long that there _is_ an answer.

“I do, yeah,” says Valkyrie, and leaves a significant pause. So he puts the book down and turns his skull in her direction. Satisfied with this, yet with evidence of uncertainty and nervousness crossing her face, she goes on. “You and I; we’ve been through a lot.”

“More than most,” he agrees, which gets a visible reaction, a look of conviction.

“Enough to the point that if I said something crazy, you’d be able to deal with it?”

“I imagine so."

Valkyrie nods. “I love you, for real.”

He thinks this is still part of the build up and nods back. “You too, Valkyrie. You can tell me anything.”

Her brow furrows as she holds up her hands in offering. “Um, that was it.”

Skulduggery remains still.

She scrunches up her face further and presses her palm to her forehead. “You know what, I know exactly where I went wrong. I tell you I love you all the time, so _for real_ doesn’t cut it. I think part of me knew that already, which is why I threw it in, but it’s just not specific enough, is it?”

He doesn’t know how, but he says, “Not terribly.”

“Sorry about that. I am _in love_ with you. Do you get it now?”

“I do.”

“So we got there in the end.”

“We did.”

“And that’s what really matters.” Valkyrie clasps her hands together beneath her chin, then drops them back in her lap. “So there you have it. Don’t have to say anything, totally get it if you’re not on the same page, just looking for what the vibe is.”

Skulduggery feels the stale air in his ribcage, trapped in there as he dressed in the early hours of the morning, consulting the little paint swatch as he went. It hangs inside him like a weight, stagnantly travelling in circles and brushing on his bones, and it’s not even his so he can’t compare it to breath at all. Despite that, he feels like he really needs to let it go.

There are many things he needs to let go.

There’s a momentary shake to his hand, likewise another second where he holds it aloft for a second which surely would not go unnoticed – and that means he really has to commit now so he puts it down on her knee. Valkyrie animatedly looks down.

“ _That’s_ not a let-down move,” she observes.

Skulduggery takes his other hand and places it on the back of her neck, threading his fingers through her hair. He tilts his head at her, leaning in slightly, lining up words he’s been haunted by for his confession. “I–”

Valkyrie doesn’t let him have his moment. She shakes his hands off her, launching herself into his lap and throwing her arms around him. She laughs with such relief and delight, and the weight completely lifts from Skulduggery as he embraces her and cannot help but laugh as well. Xena has come over and jumped up onto the sofa to lie down where Valkyrie had been sitting. He’ll let her have that for now.

“Will you–” Valkyrie interrupts him with a kiss to the teeth. “Will you please let me speak?”

“Yes!” she cries in reply, thumping his shoulders and grinning widely. “Go on, you big idiot.”

Sappy sincerity doesn’t feel appropriate anymore, but earnestness will do. Skulduggery manages to catch one of her hands and hold it tight. “Valkyrie Cain, I am most certainly on the same page.” Then to really dig at her, “For real.”

“You’re the worst!” declares Valkyrie. “And you love me! Like, _in love with me_ love me!”

“I am,” he says, in an aching tone he hopes conveys just how true it is and how utterly happy he is to tell her. “I am in love with you.” He’ll say it every day, he decides. Many times, every day.

Her face is so bright, joy plastered all over her expression and how she holds herself; so beautiful and so alive. Valkyrie manages to quite successfully forgo the question of how his skeletal nature factors into all of this, eagerly kissing him, putting her hands on him, digging into his bones. Skulduggery is shattered, electrified by her.

“You idiot,” she says again. “You stupid– Why would you never–?” He’s glad that she doesn’t finish the question, because now is not the time for focusing on the answer, the negative. “I don’t believe it, but I _do_ . You know? I’m just like, blown away! You _really_ love me?”

“You seem to be focusing on my half of the confession more than your own.”

“Mine was rubbish,” she scoffs. “I can do better.”

He shakes his skull. “No retries, I’m afraid.”

She grins at him for a second longer, then her face – _falls_. Her light goes out, her enthusiasm drained almost instantaneously, as if he has suggested something beyond awful, and Skulduggery stiffens beneath her, feverishly trying to understand this sudden change and how to alleviate it, but nothing can be done and she gets off him, putting her face in her hands. Xena lifts her head off the sofa, ears pricked in concern.

“Valkyrie,” Skulduggery says bluntly at first, but his voice soon sharpens. “Are you alright?”

“ _This_ is what you were afraid of.” A sob comes through her hands. “Shit. _Shit!_ ”

“I don’t understand,” he says uselessly, standing and coming after her as she steps away. “Tell me what– What’s happened, what’s wrong?”

Pointless questions, when he already knows what has happened and what is wrong. He reaches out to touch her, then jumps back like she’s burst into flames instead of tears. From one extreme to another, dragging Skulduggery back into the pit of guilt and shame and fear, knowing this is wrong, she’s young and alive and he is undeserving–

Valkyrie cries out and drops to one knee, her hands going to her throat, and Skulduggery has to follow, has to see what he can do. The dog comes too, unable to contribute much more than upset whining and circling. Skulduggery tries to move Valkyrie’s hand from where she’s pressing it to the side of her neck, as though she’s been stabbed there.

“I’m sorry,” she heaves, shaking his hand off but simultaneously pressing herself into him, her head to his chest. “I’m–” She cuts herself off with another shout

as the plug on the left side of her neck is pulled out, and Dreary roars and launches

onto her back, hyperventilating, and in a panic Skulduggery realises that he can no longer touch her, his hands are going through

one of the monitors and significantly damaging one of the towers. Enraged, Presley screams and smashes their fist down on their keyboard, breaking it, having failed to notice that the other cable was caught up in it and the sudden jolt of movement messily tears the last of the right plug from Valkyrie. She gasps and moves, rolling onto her side and trying to bring her hand up to where the right hole, which should not be as wide as it is, nor bleeding, is bleeding.

She feels searing heat. Fire. Her eyes won’t open.

“Valkyrie!” she hears Skulduggery shout from nearby, followed by the telltale crackle of flames and a howl of pain, the smell of burning flesh and hair.

“Phil!” shrieks Presley, much closer. They put their hands on Valkyrie’s arm – which she has yet to raise, for she is strapped down – and shake her. “Ms Cain? Ms Cain, are you awake?”

Everything feels so heavy, from her limbs to her tongue, and she can barely do more than groan. She hears something from Skulduggery, then a gunshot and Presley releases a short, sharp yell. Their hands come off her and they presumably thud to the tile floor – dead or alive, she couldn’t say.

“Valkyrie.” Skulduggery at her side, undoing the straps as best he can with one hand, holding the other to her neck. “I’ve got you, it’s alright.”

“Guh,” she manages to reply, eyelids fluttering.

“It’s alright,” he says again. “I’m here.”

* * *

Militsa ends up backing down, saying that what she wanted to talk about wasn’t _actually_ very important, but Valkyrie knows that’s not true. She just doesn’t want to be the bitch who confesses to cheating on her girlfriend when said girlfriend is in recovery. And Valkyrie doesn’t want to be the bitch who uses knowledge she shouldn’t have to her advantage, so she pretends everything is fine; she accepts hugs and kisses she doesn’t want and is glad when Synecdoche tells the teacher to get out.

Doctor’s orders are for bedrest, which Valkyrie cannot do at home until the toxin clears her system, until everyone knows for sure it’s safe to let her go. Vitakinetics and sorcerers specialising in relevant fields are investigating it over at the High Sanctuary, where news of the crime-against-nature plant that produced it have surely reached China’s ears. No doubt that once they’ve figured out what exactly it is, the extent of what it can do and how to use it, it will be among the arsenal of things Valkyrie assumes she’ll have to face when Roarhaven officially goes full religiously-charged fascist dictatorship.

Synecdoche isn’t interested in the toxin, nor Presley and Dreary and their experiment, or anything that isn’t her most notorious regular. She says this fondly to Valkyrie, and Valkyrie feels pretty flattered, but a part of her wishes she were being treated at the High Sanctuary, or that they were here, so she could closely observe what’s going to happen with them.

Luckily, she has Skulduggery. He tells her everything. It is past 9pm on Friday the 21st of February. They last spoke around 10:45 this morning, when he gave her the address of the clubhouse where they planned to find Presley, which she entered alone. In total, she spent almost eight hours with her consciousness stuck in Presley’s temporal simulation; Skulduggery apologises _profusely_ for taking so long to get to her. Broken bones resultant from an attack from two very angry aunts is no excuse. He says that, and Valkyrie feels so sad.

She wants to know about Sconce, what happened to them, and it must be bad because he is careful with his response. Her prediction had been correct, the concerned mutual did end up as another body along the line. Dreary’s reflection is more or less the same; not quite dead but never truly alive to begin with, although perhaps he’d been on his way there. Burned quite badly in his fight with Skulduggery, he is in a state where it seems the only way to revive him would be to return him to his mirror – but of course, with the true Dreary being dead, the reflection would be unrecoverable if he went back.

As for Presley, Skulduggery’s shot to their shoulder had been non-fatal, and from a bound room they’re spilling their guts to whoever will listen to them; they’ve gone through three Sanctuary agents so far, and Valkyrie can’t blame anyone for bailing on that job.

The calculations are rough as Presley’s numbers have been inconsistent, but using what they’ve provided the High Sanctuary, its agents have a general idea of how long each subject spent under the effects of the experiment, and Skulduggery reports them to Valkyrie. For Phil Dreary’s two months of real time, it was up to a year. Only a couple of days in captivity, Cue “lived” for a month, and for their three weeks, Hamson Jude experienced many, many more.

And with those hundreds and hundreds of iterations of their respective days, a timeline split for each. A potential alternate world where those events were real.

Skulduggery sits at the side of her bed and looks at her expectantly. Waiting for her to talk, ready to listen. Loving her and saying nothing of it. Valkyrie lifts her chin to show off her neck, the pinpricks that ought to be closed by now.

“How are my bites?” she asks.

“ _Valkyrie_ ,” says Skulduggery exasperatedly, and her smile grows wide.

**Author's Note:**

> do u get it.. the aunties...are antis....... D oYou Get It.,.


End file.
